The Blessed

Lots of church Latin, as well as peculiarly interpreted lives of the saints and the lessons to be drawn from them. The word "chaplet" (for the bracelets Sebastian gives) will be added to readers' vocabulary. CeCe sings a number of songs by tortured souls -- Syd Barrett's version of James Joyce's "Golden Hair," the Allman Brothers' "Tied to the Whipping Post," and Magnetic Fields' "Summer Lies" -- which may introduce teens to some interesting music.

When they're not torturing and killing their adversaries or having romantic fantasies about Sebastian, the girls do have moments of being sorry for their often-appalling treatment of others and making amends. The old priest who inadvertently put Sebastian into the hands of the psychiatrist who abused him is contrite and begs Sebastian's -- and God's -- forgiveness.

For a book in which there's no overt sex, there's a constant sexual charge in the girls' relationship to Sebastian. Agnes, Cecilia, and Lucy each describe their martyrdoms through a fevered haze of spiritually veneered lust for Sebastian, with death as the consummation. There's also a sexualized fascination with wounds, as in a scene in which Sebastian applies healing oil to Agnes' cut wrists and there are references to his being "inside her" as she "quietly moaned."