Loved It!
In "Vampire Academy" by Richelle Mead, Rose Hathaway and Vasilisa Dragomir, two vampires in training, are forced to go back to school after dramatically taking off. There they aren't as perfectly sheltered as their teachers assure them they will be - mainly because Vasilisa, or "Lissa", is the last heir of a royal vampire family and also has a lot of special gifts that everyone is eager to use for their benefits.
After seeing the movie and falling in love with each and every character, picking up the novel was just the right thing to do. Still, I wish I hadn't seen the movie beforehand because the storyline is exactly represented faithful to the book, which is why the plot twists didn't bother me at all and I didn't get the chance to picture the characters' looks in my head.
However, the book is just as good as the movie, probably even a little better. Starting with the badass protagonist Rosemarie "Rose" Hathaway, who's just about the coolest main character after Katy from "Obsidian" by Jennifer L. Amrentrout, and if you've bared with me for some time, you know that I lalalalala-love her. Rose is the half-human-half-vampire guardian to the royal Lissa, and also her best friend.
What I love most about Rose is that she's just all the elements of what could be a Mary Sue combined, but yet she is very far from being that. She's beautiful, she knows it and she doesn't waste any time to let everyone know that she knows how to use her god-given gifts. Mead cleverly doesn't overdo it and gives Rose insecurities like every other teenager, a scary sense of compassion that she isn't even aware of and the obligatory broken family - yeah, I understand why some people had issues with her character, but I loved her. She is explored perfectly throughout the novel and you can actually sense the character development she is going through and her slowly becoming more comfortable in showing her emotions. I can identify with that and I had fun reading about her, while I did cringe at some of the overly-confident things she says.
Lissa on the other hand, her Moroi, or full-blood vampire best friend, just drives me up the walls. I love that Mead put in mental illness in an actually believable context but I just didn't get Lissa as a character. Due to the novel being told mainly from Rose's point of view aside from a few shifts in perspective, it's rather difficult to get to know Lissa. I'm not a fan of characters describing their friends, especially because descriptions by friends tend to be extremely subjective. Also, because Rose is probably the most unreliable narrator to ever unreliable narrator. The fact that I didn't really sympathize with the Lissa/Rose relationship is completely justified by another character relationship. Here comes the swoons! Every YA paranormal novel needs a romance subplot. And boy, do we get it.
Enter Dmitri, 24-year-old long-haired hot mess vampire guardian, assigned to be Rose's teacher in all things vampire hunting. While I do feel bad about shipping this and falling ridiculously in love with Rose and Dmitri as a couple - I have to bow down to Mead. It's always difficult to write a teacher/pupil-sort-of relationship without making it creepy, inappropriate or just flat out tasteless. There is nothing actually happening between these two but the tension is in-flipping-sane. I can't wait to find out what will happen in the next novel and if these two finally (FINALLY) get their crap together and just be with each other. (Characters 4/5)
I'm not sure whether it's because I've already seen the movie, but I feel like this novel has absolutely no rise in action. There is no story arc. We do have plot twists and plot, but I don't feel like the action had any rollercoaster-y tension going on. Weren't the characters so brilliant and the way she combined magic and vampires without overdoing the clichés, I probably would have had difficulties finishing this. Although I have to say that I didn't see the plot twist coming, even back when I saw the movie. I love how Mead incorporated Vlad the Impaler into this, again, without being cliché - hooray! Still, it's not one of those novels that you just can't put down, I had at no point the notion that something great was going to happen, and I didn't anticipate the ending for the plot resolutions. More for the resolution whether Dmitri and Rose would finally hit it off (oops). (Plot 2/5)
The biggest problem in my opinion is the point of view. Rose is a great and interesting character with an entertaining character voice, but the story demands some passages to be told from another person's perspective. Yes, using the bond between Rose and Lissa to justify shifts may be nice and a smart solution, but still it's quite distracting and I think that the novel would have worked better, had Lissa been the main character.
Rose just gives off the vibes of a kickass side character and not an actual main character. Had Lissa been in the focus we would have been able to learn a lot more about her and her family and to me, the last royal to the throne is much more interesting than an overly confident, kick-ass promiscous half-vampire chick. As much as I love Rose, the perspective is just off throughout the entire thing. Even worse during the flashbacks which Mead just throws in mid-chapter and just left me confused. (Writing 2/5)
Overall: Do I Recommend?
Well. The vampire topic is definitely not dead yet. This novel may seem to people that haven't had any contact with it before like another attempt at beating the dead horse, but I think that it's something refreshingly new. It's not Hogwarts meets Twilight. More of a ... Addams Family meets True Blood. With exactly the same amount of blood. It's definitely a novel that revolves around sensitive topics (especially mental illness) and that's why I would recommend it. The novel explores it without being too much in-your-face and while still remaining an average YA read. I like it. You should read it.
Rating: ★★★☆☆