REVIEW - Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Series: Vampire Academy Series

Book No.: 1

Rating: 3.5 / 5 (☼☼☼ ½)


Book Type: Own

Summary: (brought to you by GOODREADS!)
St. Vladimir's Academy isn't just any boarding school—it's a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They've been on the run, but now they're being dragged back to St. Vladimir's—the very place where they're most in danger...

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy's ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world's fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.


First Sentence: I felt her fear before I heard her screams. 

Review:
Oh my goodness! Brianna read a vampire book that she didn’t entirely hate! Yes, you are right. No. I actually didn’t hate this one. (: I actually quite enjoyed it!

Kirston had been begging me to read this because she had read all the books in less than a month (which is a very good thing for her considering she’s always busy), so why wouldn’t I read something that my best friend loved? I’m so glad I took her advice.

Mead takes the old Romanian vampire legend. You know? The dhampirs, the Moroi, and the Strigoi? You have the dhampirs being the half-human, half-Moroi hybrids that are the guardians of the Moroi, who are the royal, fragile vampires. You also have the big, looming, literally-dead bad guys, the Strigoi – the bloodthirsty, evil vampires. I’m so glad she took a myth and adapted it to the modern world rather than make up her own world. You can tell that the organization of the different creatures and rankings are neater than when an author would have invented their own world. She does have some originality in it, (St. Vladimir, etc.) 

but the whole thing is based around this ancient myth.

You have Rose, a very, very, very stubborn dhampir guarding her best friend, Lissa, who happens to be the last Dragmoir (I’m not sure I spelt that right. You can spam me correcting me. Sorry.) in the line. You can already tell that this story has some spice to it when you have a rare character. There has to be someone who wants her, and why yes, but I’m not telling you who. That would give away the plot. They have to return to St. Vladmir’s Academy, where they ran away from years ago, for some reason or another. They later find out some of the answers to their many questions: Why wasn’t Lissa mastering a known element? How did Rose survive the crash that killed Lissa’s parents and brother? And many more questions that hang you over to read the sequel, Frostbite.

The reason why I didn’t give this book a higher rating is that Rose is annoying, well, to me. She acts like she has no limits, but then I gave it a higher rating then I would have because she does have human emotions which hold her back sometimes.

If you want some awesome mythology (because that’s what it basically is) that doesn’t butcher the awesome name of vampires, then you’ll have to read this book. It’s on Brianna’s ‘Vampire Read List’. It’s hard to get on that list. Brianna likes her vampires a certain way, and she needs to stop talking in the third person.

Cover: C
What? It’s a girl. With a crimson hue. That’s about it. Nothing interesting. But it’s pretty. Me likes choppy sentences.