Review: Vampire Academy, Richelle Mead

St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger. . . . Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.

The Vampire Academy film has already been released in many countries, but today’s the big release day here in Australia!

Since we have a few VA fans lurking around the place, I thought I’d better have a read of the first book in the seven-book series before I see the film. I’m glad I did, because the book introduces readers to quite a complicated world that may not come across so easily on screen. So, here’s a bit of quick description of what’s going on in case things get hazy.

Badass Rose Hathaway, by Jemina. Click to see more awesome fan art!

St Vladimir’s Academy is a high school run at night (for obvious sun-avoiding reasons) for the training of Moroi (blood-sucking vampires), and their half-human Dhampirs, or guardians. Lissa belongs to one of the Moroi ruling families. She and her best friend and guardian, Rose, have been on the run for some time, but at the start of the story are discovered and brought back to the school. Gradually we learn the reasons behind the girls’ disappearance, and what it could mean for their future. Of course there’s some romance in the picture for both girls as well.

The story itself gets high-school-angst-woe-is-me-Twilight-ish at times, but I did think the tiers of vampire society were interesting. The characters were quite well-written, even if most of the girls seemed super-bitchy, including Rose herself at times. I really hope that as the books progress the girls mature and become nicer to each other because I’m not sure I can do seven books of bitch!

My only reservations before seeing the movie is that from what I’ve seen in the trailer, they seem to have added a lot of witty one-liners to the script, almost a la City of Bones. I don’t remember those being present in the book – in fact a lot of what I’ve seen in trailers is quite different to scenes in the book, so I’ll be very interested to see how the adaptation has turned out.

I won’t say I’m a converted VA fan just yet, but I’ll get my teeth into Frostbite sooner or later. Probably as soon as I’ve seen the Vampire Academy film!

You can see the Vampire Academy official trailer here. Have you seen the film already? What did you think of the adaptation?

– An exciting, if rather high-school-dramatic start to this much-loved series.

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Anni

Anni lives in Brisbane, Australia with her young family. She loves everything fantasy and science fiction and believes sleep is really very underrated.