Justine's Thoughts: Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy #1)
By Richelle Mead

Source: Library
Pages: 332
Book Description:

Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess; a mortal vampire with an unbreakable bond to the earth’s magic. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi; the fiercest and most dangerous vampire -- the ones who never die.

The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa’s best friend, makes her a Dhampir. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making her one of them.

After two years at illicit freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir’s Avademy, hidden in the deep forests of Montana. Rose will continue her Dhampir education. Lissa will go back to being Queen of the elite Moroi social scene. And both girls will resume breaking Academy hearts.

Fear made Lissa and Rose run away from St. Vladimir’s -- inside the Academy’s iron gates, their world is even more fraught with danger. Here, the cutthroat ranks of the Moroi perform unspeakable rituals, and their secretive nature and love of the night creates an enigmatic world full of social complexities. Rose and Lissa must navigate through this dangerous world, confront the temptation of forbidden romance, and never once let their guard down, lest the Strigoi make Lissa one of them forever . . . .

A quote:

Then...it was like...I don’t even know how to describe it. Color and light and music and life and joy and love...so many wonderful things, all the lovely things that make up the world and make it worth living in.

Any thoughts:

If there was one word that I kept thinking about throughout Vampire Academy, it would be passion. Why? Because everything is passionate -- Lissa and Rose’s friendship, their love interests (totally to die for), the call to act for revenge, the rumour-spreaders at school...I could go on and on. It’s just full of passion and strong emotions that it made it so difficult to stop reading.

So the girl on the cover (who I swear I thought was Angelina Jolie at first. Yes, people have agreed.) is most likely the person who narrates the story -- Rose. She is fierce and witty and clever. But most of all, she has a sense of duty to protect Lissa, which she feels obligated to do (it’s a very long story that involves many names I cannot pronounce). Rose always has the best comebacks, the funniest retorts to anything that comes her way. It’s her way of defense, a way of showing that she is fearless and unbreakable. Deep inside, she’s a normal teenager that has insecurities of her own.

The plot never failed to bore me. In the beginning is where the introductions pop in, but with a narrator like Rose, it was different. Of course it took time for me to grasp the different sorts of vampires and the rules and what they can and cannot do. Eventually, I became familiar with the details. Then as the novel progressed, I found myself being absorbed into the world of vampires Richelle Mead has created. With a shocking yet satisfying ending, she just proved that anything can happen at anytime.