Book Review: Vampire Academy
Book: Vampire Academy
Author: Richelle Mead
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy/Supernatural
Summary: Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth's magic. Her best friend Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir: a guardian whose blood is a powerful blend of vampire and human. Rose's life is dedicated to protecting Lissa from the dangerous Strigoi - the fiercest vampires, who will stop at nothing to make Lissa one of them. After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir's Academy, a school for vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be. But inside the iron gates, life is even more fraught with danger . . . and Strigoi are always close by. -Penguin, 2007.
Like most popular teen series, I passed on Vampire Academy and its associated novels because it didn't interest me. I only finally picked up the first book because I believe the movie was finally coming out and I thought I might as well see what the hype was all about.
Now, having read the book, all I can say is . . . meh. It's fine. I'm not crazy about it, but it's not terrible either. The plot was unique for the time it was released (Twilight exhaustion was not yet rampant so though this book was feeding the vampire craze, people were still somewhat into vampire fiction, so this series wasn't received entirely poorly) and the characters, in hindsight, were also departures from most YA novels at the time.
The plot itself, Rose training to protect Lissa from their mutual enemies, is interesting enough. I have a feeling that their character archetypes - mysteriously powerful damsel in distress and unusual, rebellious protector - will change very little at the core of the series, but who knows? I could be wrong. Am I interested in reading more? Not really. Maybe when I finally run out of books and need something new to read. Otherwise, it's a decent, fast read with plenty of cliffhangers to make you curious to read more.
I give Vampire Academy a B+.
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