It's review time

The Vampire Academy Series by Richelle Mead

 

So, I read the entire series and then waited about two months before I wrote this review.  Why?  Well, my opinions tend to change as time passes.  With that said, I feel exactly the same way I did a few months ago.

I thought about giving a non-spoiling summary of the book, but then that’s just more work than I’m really up for.  So instead I’ll tell you what I liked, didn’t like and what I absolutely hated.

Overall the book was good.  I mean I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to tell anyone about it or encourage them to purchase it, but at the same time I’m not inventing a time machine to go get my wasted hours back either.

Richelle writes well and has an engaging style.  She has a nice level of detail to her work for the most part, but sometimes it can be too much.  This might just be my personal preference, but I hate for lack of a better word, fluff.  Throughout the book I found myself skipping large segments to get to something I wanted to read.

Another issue I found was her lack of detail during action scenes.  As a writer myself I really hate offering any opinion at all on someone else’s writing, but this part really bothered me.  She would set up really great situations and then not go into detail about what was happening.  This was even more annoying because the book was in first person where you’d expect the main character to have a really gripping account of what was happening, but no.  Thankfully my overactive imagination filled everything in J

Her attempt on doing something different with the vampire theme was admirable, but here is where I have my biggest issue and it almost killed the whole thing.  Well, it’s really two parts.

For starters when I think vampire I think supernatural, awesome, killing machines.  Now like I said I applaud Richelle’s attempt at doing something different, but making the vampires weak, fragile, mortal creatures was really a letdown.  To go a step further having half-human, half-vampire body guards was ridiculous.  Especially since the human side is what made them stronger.  Now she did include this other type of vampire known as Strigoi, that were more like traditional vampires, but even with that they could be killed in hand to hand combat by the half-human, half-vampire things.  All I could think was Eric Northman must be rolling over in his grave.

The second part that I loathed was right in line with the Twilight series.  Look, when vampires get in the sun they burn.  They don’t sparkle, twinkle, get weak, dance, suffer headaches, shoot magic spells, turn translucent or any other fun, whimsical idea you might have.  Unless said vampire is a daywalker, which is few and far between, then that evil creature better shoot into flames upon meeting the sun’s awesome rays.  I mean this is one of the biggest parts of being a vampire.  They all drink blood and they all have given up ever basking in the sun again.  Change what you want, but these two laws of vampirology (yes I just made up a word) must stand firm.

All in all the series was decent and I did finish it.  I think the overall idea was pretty good, but the details were where I got lost.  I need vampires that are well, vampires and these things were just too cute and cuddly for me.  So on a scale from 1 to 5 I give this offering a….

 

3 Stars