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.

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