Vampire Academy.

I just finished reading The Vampire Academy series and thought I would write a review about it. To begin with, The Vampire Academy has total of 6 books in its series: Vampire Academy, Frostbite, Shadow Kissed, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound and The Last Sacrifice. And obviously its a series based on the Vampires. The story revolves around Rose Hathaway, a 17 year old shadow-kissed (brought alive from death) Damphir girl , training to be a bodyguard to her best friend, Princess Vasilissa Dragomir. The world in this series is divided into the good vampires(Moroi), the bad killing vampires(strigoi) and half-vampire half-humans called Damphirs. The moroi are considered as royalties and they rule the vampire world, they also posses magical skills which allows them to control one of the five elements: earth, air, fire, water and spirit. The strigoi are basically outlaws who lurk in the fringes of society to catch possible preys. Dhamphirs are physically strong bodyguards who are trained to protect Moroi and are ruled by them.

 Rose is the protagonist of the book who is very strong and can take any problem she is faced with heads on. But a series of unprecedented events, like her falling in love with her trainer Dimitri who is 7 years older to her, turns her world upside down.

The first 4 books of the series is amazing. It sketches Rose as a very strong female. Strong not just emotionally and mentally, but also physically. Rose excels as a guardian with excellent fighting skills. And the love between Dimitri and her is just so binding. The author explores the concept of forbidden love beautifully and makes you feel the sync between Rose and Dimitri. Her Friendship and love for Lissa is what any friend can dream of having. Best of all, most can relate to Rose in the first two books. What makes you relate to her is that she is just a normal girl being put through extraordinary situations. The problems in Rose's life, escalate once Dimitri is turned to strigoi in a battle. But Rose doesn't give up and travels across the world to find Dimitri in the forth book. The ending of the forth book sets high expectations for the fifth one.

Unfortunately the Fifth one just falls far behind its expectations. The story in the fifth and sixth book is stretched to say the least. What can be finished in probably 300 pages is dragged on to be 2 entire books with 500 pages each. The story is far from gripping and makes you want to skip pages to get to the end. But whats more irritating than the dragging book is the characters themselves. Rose, in these 2 books is shown in a very different light. She has a horrible unnatural temper and cant-keep-my-mouth-shut kind of attitude. In fact, in certain parts of the book you would just want to slap some sense into her. She is made to look horribly impulsive and irritating. I think the intention of the author was to make Rose look like she is smart and special cause she's drawn into all these sticky dangerous situations. But she doesn't come across as that. She comes across as someone who's overtly senseless and brings doom upon herself with extremely aggressive behavior. Its not just Rose who is off in these 2 books, but also the chemistry between Dimitri and her is completely off. Their relationship seems draggy and boring. In fact, the relationship between her and Adrian(another guy who she starts dating just after a month of Dimitri turning strigoi) seems really interesting! The mysteries presented in these 2 books lack the thrill and the ending is horrible.

My favorite book of the series is Frostbite. Because, as I said, you can relate to Rose in this book and its not stretched a bit. I had my doubts of ever buying a book based on Vampires after Twilight series. Cause, though I loved that series, I kind of felt I was done with this entire vampire fascination. Well, now I am sure I will never be buying another vampire book. They seem so far cut out from reality and if they are not even gripping then whats the point right?