Vampire Academy (Mead)

Vampire Academy, Richelle Mead, 2007

Okay, for starters: There are two types of Vampires: the Moroi, who are living, breeding vampires, and the Strigoi, who are your more traditional evil vampires. There are also Dhampirs, which are the offspring of Vampires with humans or dhampirs. Dhampirs are mules, unable to reproduce on their own, so they owe their existence to the Moroi. If you search online, you'll find that these are creatures from Romanian folklore, which is a plus for me. Mead takes something existing, which I'm at all familiar with, and makes it her own.

The Moroi aren't your typical vampires. Besides having families, and vampirism being hereditary, they also go to church every week, even if just to learn about St. Vladmir, the patron of the academy. One of the characters is even named Christian, which seems odd at first blush.

This book is the last in a pile of books I won, which included How to Be a Zombie, A Great and Terrible Beauty, and Catching Fire, which I'd previously read but don't seem to have an entry for. (I donated that one to the hotel's library by the pool.) I wish I could say that I left the best for last, but that really, I left the one that looked like I'd least enjoy for last.

First off, I'm not the target demographic for this book. I joke around about Teenage Paranormal Romance, but they are a big sub-genre. They don't have to appeal to everyone. Like Bray's Great and Terrible Beauty, there was a bit of "Mean Girls" to it, but unlike it, the fantasy elements just didn't make it worthwhile for me.

Not to compare it to Harry Potter, but as an example, we don't expect Harry to defeat Voldemort in Book 1, but we expect that he'll make an appearance. In Vampire Acadmeny, much is made about the Strigoi and while I don't expect Rose to take one down (any one, but a powerful one, or the "main" one, if there is such a creature), you might expect on to show up at some point. Basically, the book was long on Academy and short on Vampire.

So little, in fact, that halfway through it, I imagined a "What If...?" where I replaced the Moroi, Strigoi, and Dhampirs into High Elves, Dark Elves and Half Elves. I could write it -- I wouldn't, but perhaps I could.

Again, I'm not the target audience here, so if anyone found my blog and this is your genre, don't let me turn you off from the adventures of Rose and Princess Lissa as they learn how to protect vampires or just be a vampire.

Would I read farther into the series? Probably not, unless the sequel showed up in another book raffle.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1632 (or The Ring of Fire) (Flint)

Image
1632 (or The Ring of Fire) , by Eric Flint, 2000 In the year 2000, a freak occurrence, referred to as The Ring of Fire , sent the town of Grantsville, Virginia back through time and space, swapping places with a plot of land in central Germany in 1632, in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The small mining town quickly realizes the unlikeliness of a second cataclysm putting right what had been torn apart and sets out to acclimate to their way of life. And, of course, survive. Their weapons and technology give them a great advantage, but they no longer have the industry to produce that technology. Nor do the have the industry to produce the industry ... An alternate timeline is born as the United States of America is founded 144 years early (and on a different continent). History plays on around them. The book divides its time between brutal battles fought across Germany, building a new society and some overlong passages on just how well the Americans are getting along with thei...
Read more

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween Rain (Golden, Holder)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween Rain, Golden, Holder, 1997 An episode of the show which I hadn't seen. Killer scarecrow that comes alive during the rains on Halloween. Samhain can see through the eyes of any pumpkin and move if it's on a scarecrow. Quick read. Should've been quicker. Mind candy. There's a line that I left out that says, "Cute line about coupe....", except that I can't read my own handwriting, nor remember what the cute line was actually about. I'm also not sure if this was actually an episode, or if it was my belief at the time that it was based on one particular episode and not based on the characters from the series. Ultimately, it was forgettable.
Read more

Two Short Books

Image
Big Bullet Monster Bomb: lost little things: a short story for mature readers by Adam Archer (2020) The Race by John Russo (2021) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) I don't remember where I found these stories. I don't think it was reddit. It could've been on Facebook or Twitter. Nothing about the Bullet Bomb book was particularly geared toward mature readers, other than the cover showing a woman wearing rags that barely cover what they need to. It seems like a story set in a larger world that I haven't read but I have no idea of this is the case. It's post-apocalyptic and the last of the human race is slowly morphing into cratures. This much is interesting. The main character is pulling a sled of her belongings (including guns) and looking for some place to hide so she can sleep. Her sleep c...
Read more