Series Review: Vampire Academy

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The Vampire Academy Series by Richelle Mead

Publisher: Razor bill
Published: 2007-2010
Source: Bought & Library
Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Action
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Synopsis from book one.

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.

If you haven't seen my review of the first book in the Vampire Academy series, you can check it out here.

So pretty much I read the Vampire Academy series straight through in about two weeks. I've been considering reading this series pretty much since I first heard about them two years ago, and now that I'm kind of in this weird I blogging and reading rut I thought it might be a good idea to try just reading straight through a series, and my gosh did it work. I'm still having some trouble getting myself to blog. I used to be really good and writing and scheduling reviews in advance, and I'm still working on it but this sure got me interested in reading again. This is pretty much a review of the entire series, so if you haven't read any of the books I might mention something that comes up in a later books but I'm going to do my best not to give anything away.

Like I mentioned in my review of the first book, the beginning of the series strongly reminded me of the Half-Blood series. I loved the Half-Blood series, but I find it kind of annoying when I can see so many similarities is the series it's almost kind of annoying. In both series the main characters are both pretty kick-ass fighters-in-training who have had some time absent from their school for one reason or another, and they are both eventually caught by their people's 'governments' and forced back to school. Due to the absence of the characters in both books they both require extra help in combat training from a guy that eventually becomes their forbidden soul mate and... I suppose you can see where this is going. Of course a lot of the specifics of both books are vastly different, the general plot and the beginning of both stories is so similar I can't figure out how this could have been a mistake.

I really liked the main character, Rose throughout pretty much the entire series. I love kick-ass female characters with snarky attitudes- and that pretty much sums Rose up. I love how she always had others in mind and wasn't really a very selfish character. Sometimes she would be a little reckless and get in a lot more trouble than she needed too, but I still love her.

Lissa is Rose's best friend. At the beginning of the series I had some trouble liking Lissa because she was a lot more insecure and unstable. She had a lot of growth in the first few books, and in the end she became a really strong character.

Dimitri is Rose's teacher turned love interest and how can I not like him? He was quite infuriating at times, because he is quite stubborn, but he completes Rose perfectly. I really wasn't happy when there was a gap in which he really wasn't around in Blood Promise and Spirit Bound, but I was glad when he came around.

Adrian is a character that shows up in Frostbite. I really didn't like Adrian at all in the first two or so  books he was in. He was often either drunk or smoking and he just didn't leave a good impression.  He eventually starts to change his ways in the end and I started to like him more. I really didn't like the place that he was left in at the end of the series, I felt terrible for him.

Sydney is a character that shows up in Blood Promise and pops up until the end and then continues in the Bloodlines companion series. I bought Bloodlines and I'm super excited to give it a go. I want to learn more about the Alchemists and everything they do.

I love all the action in this story. There really wasn't a book that didn't have some sort of fighting and action in it, and I love how the characters really become a part of the action as the series goes on.

The end of this series was pretty good overall. I really didn't expect the story to end the way it did, but it ended on a good note for pretty much everyone. It was closed enough to make in a complete story, yet it was open enough to leave me thinking about what might happen now.

For all of the books in this series I gave the book either four or five stars. Frostbite and Last Sacrifice receives five stars- Vampire Academy, Shadow Kiss, Blood Promise, and Spirit Bound all receive four stars.

Series overall rating: