Tag: dhampir

Book Review: The Ruby Circle by Richelle Mead

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8709528Genre: 

Young Adult, cure Paranormal

Pages: 

348

Part of a Series?:

The finale to the Bloodlines series

Release Date: 

February 10th, stomach 2015

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

Author’s Website

GoodReads Summary: 

Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, about it one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives.

After their secret romance is exposed, Sydney and Adrian find themselves facing the wrath of both the Alchemists and the Moroi in this electrifying conclusion to Richelle Mead’s New York Times bestselling Bloodlines series. When the life of someone they both love is put on the line, Sydney risks everything to hunt down a deadly former nemesis. Meanwhile, Adrian becomes enmeshed in a puzzle that could hold the key to a shocking secret about spirit magic, a secret that could shake the entire Moroi world.

My Review:

Please keep in mind, while there will be NO spoilers for The Ruby Circle, there might be spoilers for previous books. Please check out my past reviews for those books!

I feel like I have been waiting for this book to come out forever, and really, it hasn’t been that long. But I WHIPPED through this thing and I’m so completely satisfied.

I love this story and I love that Richelle Mead was able to take the world that she built in the Vampire Academy series and continue it so well in this series. The relationship that she builds between Sydney and Adrian, especially after their marriage in Silver Shadows, is so real, and feels like it was just meant to happen all along. Who knows? Maybe it was haha. But I love the continuation of their relationship in this book. Now that they’ve got the chance to be honest about their relationship…they have the struggle of getting everyone else on board with it. But they also have the struggle of figuring it out themselves. What they are willing to do for each other, how they fight together, how they trust each other. Its a beautiful, real relationship and I enjoyed every single minute of it while reading this book. The love that Sydney and Adrian have for each other…its just beautiful.

But what I really love about this book is how it concluded the series. It was GREAT. I’ve had such wariness with authors lately on how they conclude series. They’ve been sloppy or rushed, all kinds of things. This ending was great. From the beginning, they’re on the hunt for Jill and the hunt for Jill takes a lot of time, effort, hard work  and a lot of super fun fight scenes. What I love about this is that everyone has their piece in it. We get to see Sydney using her magic, Adrian using his spirit magic, the guardians fighting their way. I love every bit of it. In Vampire Academy, it was centered on the fighting of the dhampirs and a few Moroi but in this book, we get such a hodge podge of people working together: Moroi, dhampir, alchemist, human witches, the Warriors of Light, etc. Its amazing.

We also get to explore and discover more. We see a commune of dhampir women who have chosen a life different from a guardian. We have new revelations about dhampirs and Strigoi and spirit magic. We have a super fun revelation about Dimitri and Adrian that I won’t go into because SPOILERS. We get to meet new characters and revisit old characters and I just loved every single minute of it. It was action and romance and drama and it was a great ending. I loved seeing Adrian and Sydney’s story conclude and I loved seeing new things happen but I also loved seeing Rose and Dimitri together. ESPECIALLY after the epilogue!

But I’ll also say this…I love the things that Richelle did with this book. She concluded the story, left us with a satisfying ending, all the loose ends tied up. For the most part. She opened up some new ideas, left us hanging a little, left us wondering. I think that means we just might get some more VA stories soon and I’m ALWAYS okay with that.

Rating: 

5 out of 5 stars

Fictional Crush of the Week-Adrian Ivashkov from the Bloodlines Series

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In just a few days, dosage the fifth book of the Bloodlines series, physician Silver Shadows, will be hitting bookstores. I’ve been rereading the series and remembering just how much that I love Adrian Ivashkov. I can’t wait to read more of him when the book releases on Tuesday.

Character Name:

Adrian Ivashkov

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Book or Series They Appear In:

The Vampire Academy Series (Secondary Main Character)

Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound, Last Sacrifice

 The Bloodlines Series (Main Character)

Bloodlines, The Golden Lily, The Indigo Spell, The Fiery Heart, Silver Shadows (out July 2014), The Ruby Circle (out 2015)

Author/Creator:

Richelle Mead

Played By: 

No One (RIP Frostbite)

Who They Are:

Adrian Ivashkov is a secondary character in the Vampire Academy series and a main character in the Bloodlines series. He is a Moroi, a so-called good vampire who has mortality, and is sensitive to sunlight but won’t burst into flames because of it. He is the nephew of the late queen Tatiana, and has the rare elemental power of spirit which includes things like compulsion, dream walking and healing. He is volatile, using alcohol as a solution to the “crazy” that comes with spirit. He has a sarcastic sense of humor, always looking to crack a joke, or have a one-liner. He briefly dates Rose, and she tries to make him a better person but he doesn’t quite succeed. When he brings Jill Dragomir back from the dead using spirit, he’s sent to help keep her safe in Palm Springs and falls in love with Jill’s human protector, Sydney Sage. Sydney is the one who gets him to change and he quits smoking, cuts back on drinking, starts going to college and stops sleeping with random girls.

Why I Am Crushing On Them: 

Oh Adrian Ivashkov. I was in love with Dimitri Belikov in the VA series because I was in Rose’s head and I wanted her with Dimitri so badly but I always had a soft spot for Adrian. As soon I started reading Bloodlines and I realized that he was going to fall massively in love with Sydney and vice versa, I knew that I was done. I love his sarcasm and his darkness. You know that I love those bad boys who are really good deep down. In real life, its so annoying but in books, they’re just so irresistible. That snark just gets me every single time. And I love that we see this beautiful slow change in Adrian in the Bloodlines series. I love that, while his personality remains the same, he becomes a better person around Sydney. That’s how you know that’s real. With Rose, he had to force himself but with Sydney, he genuinely wanted to be a better person and I just love it. Every thing that comes out of his mouth is a total win.

Notable Quotes: 

“You, know I’m the Queen’s favorite great nephew, Well, yeah I’m her only great nephew, but that’s not important, I’d still be her favorite…” 

“Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection.” He paused to reconsider that. “Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try.” 

“I tried to be a better person for her– but it was to impress her, to get her to want me. But when I’m around you, I want to be better because… well, because it feels right. Because I want to. You make me want to become something greater than myself. I want to excel. You inspire me in every act, every word, every glance. I look at you, and you’re like… like light made into flesh. […] You have no clue how beautiful you are or how brightly you shine.” 

“Yeah? Can you draw a skeleton riding a motorcycle with flames coming out of it? And I want a pirate hat on the skeleton. And a parrot on his shoulder. A skeleton parrot. Or maybe a ninja skeleton parrot? No, that would be overkill. But it’d be cool if the biker skeleton could be shooting some ninja throwing stars. That are on fire.” 

Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. “Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I’m still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will.”

“I don’t care if you say we can’t be together. I don’t care if you think I’m the most evil, unnatural creature walking on earth. You can think whatever you want, go whatever you want. I’m going to just go on loving you, even if it’s hopeless.” 

“But when I touch you, your aura … it smolders. The colors deepen, it burns more intensely, the purple increases. Why? Why, Sydney?” He used that hand to pull me closer. “Why do you react that way if I don’t mean anything to you?” There was a desperation in his voice, and it was legitimate.” 

“I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I love you.” 

I totally support Chase Crawford as Adrian ;) I just want Frostbite made so we can cast Adrian…

Adrian_Ivashkov_VA_by_EverHatake

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Vampire Academy Movie Review

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Wrapping up the day of Vampire Academy posts (check out my recap of the mall tour in Los Angeles here and my recap of the premiere here). Now a spoiler free review of the movie! Read on…

Vampire Academy

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Rated:

Rated PG-13 for violence, more about bloody images, find sexual content and language

Directed By:

Mark Waters

Cast:

Zoey Deutch, Danila Kozlovsky, Lucy Fry, Dominic Sherwood, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Hyland, Sami Gayle.

Find the rest on IMDB here.

IMDB Movie Synopsis:

Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, half human/vampire, guardians of the Moroi, peaceful, mortal vampires living discretely within our world. Her legacy is to protect the Moroi from bloodthirsty, immortal Vampires, the Strigoi. This is her story.

My Review:

I am literally blown away at how well they did with this movie. While it wasn’t absolutely perfect, I thought they did a wonderful job with it.

First off, I wanted to talk about going into the movie with an open mind. I do not say this to scare you, but I honestly think with that attitude, I enjoyed the movie more. I was high on adrenaline, after being on the red carpet and sneaking pictures with cast members in the lobby of the theater, but when I went into the theater, I told myself, “open mind”. And I’m really glad I did. I think there are too many people judging the movie by the stills and the trailer and I think thats detrimental to the success of the film. YA adaptations aren’t doing well in the theaters and unless we go out and support them, they’ll just stop making them.

Oh, one more thing, with the whole “Mean Girls” thing. A lot of people don’t like that they keep putting emphasis on that, but I like it. It has the humor of Mean Girls, which is GREAT. I think it was hilarious and I’ll talk more about that later. But also, like I said, we NEED this movie to do well to get Frostbite and people love Mean Girls and I applaud anything that gets them into the theater.

Okay rant off. That being said, I went in open minded, and also with the reminder that the first book is much more lighthearted than the rest of the series.

I was immediately struck at how well each of the actors understood their characters. I was amazed at how well Zoey was Rose, Danila was Dimitri and so on. I think I was most impressed with Dominic as Christian. Christian is one of the characters that I’ve always loved and I think he rocked it big time. After meeting the cast the day before, and seeing how nice and genuine they were, I was so impressed with how well they knew their characters and how well they portrayed them in the movie. I will now think of most of these actors and actresses when I go to read the book. They just captured them so well.

I also think there was an incredible balance of action and romance. The romance building between Christian and Lissa and the subtle one between Rose and Dimitri were just as how I’d imagine it in the novel. Its important and its there but its not overwhelming. The movie is not wrapped in the romance and I’m okay with that. There was a ton of action. I loved watching both Rose and Dimitri kick some serious ass in this movie. They really did the story of Rose’s return and work to become caught up on her guardian skills so well.

I really think the movie was about the friendship between Rose and Lissa, just as it should be. Vampire Academy is a huge story about friendship and loyalty, and that is definitely what they got. The friendship between Lissa and Rose has its sweet moments, it has the moments where Rose is protective and it has hilarious moments. Its perfect.

Which leads me to one of my favorite parts of the movie: the humor. The chemistry between the actors led to some well-placed lines and me laughing in my seat the whole movie. Myself and the 7 other people I was with were rolling around in our seats, laughing out loud. I’m pretty sure we were the loudest people in the theatre and I wish I knew the casts’ reactions to our reactions haha. It was a VERY funny movie. I really could not stop laughing.

There were minor things that bothered me. I was hoping for a bit more Mason, but if we get Frostbite, I have hopes we’ll get way more Mason. I think I need to rewatch the movies with subtitles because of all the accents haha. Dominic wasn’t too bad because he spoke loud and clear so I got all of his lines, same with Lucy. Danila talked really really low for some reason so sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was hearing what he was saying correctly. He just needed to speak up a bit but he really rocked as Danila. I thought the end scene (I won’t ruin it for those who haven’t read the book) was a little rushed, and the lust charm scene was a bit cheesy but all in all, it was only small details that bothered me and none of them were deal breakers for the movie in the slightest.

And now that I’ve watched the movie, I want to watch the movie again and I want to reread the books again. I’m all obsessed with VA right now haha.

Rating:

4 out of 5

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So get out there this weekend and see this movie! It was SO enjoyable to watch and, as a VA fan, I was incredibly impressed with it. I would love to see more of the series, I would absolutely love to see Frostbite (admittedly because more Zoey Deutch and we could cast Adrian!!!) and the only the way to get sequels for further movies would be to go out and see this one! So go go go go and tell me what you think when you do!

Vampire Academy Week: Mall Tour Meet and Greet and Music Afterparty!

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Hello there my friends! This week on What A Nerd Girl Says is Vampire Academy week. Monday and Tuesday was all about Vampire Academy. I spent hours waiting for a meet and greet, this partied with the cast, remedy and got to see the movie at the red carpet premiere and it was all incredible. Now I’m ready to share it all with you!

The first event of Vampire Academy week was the Mall Tour stop at the Grove in Los Angeles.

Sylvia (Fangirl Feeels), Erin (That One Geek Girl) and I arrived at the Grove SUPER early, around 6 am, and were by far the first people there. We have a tendency to do that. When we got there, they were just beginning to set up for the event!

Picture One

They started an official line at around 9 am and we were able to get our wristbands! Yay for wristbands!

The day was spent with Sylvia, Erin, and my other fangirl friends, Cassandra, Mina, Jeanette, Jade, and Alex. We all had such a fun time hanging out and getting food and talking about fandoms and books. When we all get together, we have such a fun time. We all instantly bond because of our love for books and all things nerd.

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Awkward elevator selfie….which is also SUPER awesome!

The Vampire Academy was really cool! They set up hairstylists and makeup artists to make us absolutely fabulous.

Picture Three

Me and my beautiful friend Cassandra after our makeovers!

Picture Four

The people that were holding the event had professional photographers and once you got all glammed up in your makeup and hair, you could put on some accessories (check out the tiara!) and take some pictures. They asked us to take a “serious” pose and it was just so ridiculous that I will never forget this picture. Its just too fantastic for life. It reminded us all of those glamour shots you could take with your best friends at the mall in junior high haha.

Picture Five

The VIPs were able to get these SUPER amazing Vampire Academy sweatshirts. My friends and I tried so hard throughout the whole event to get our hands on some and we all ended up with one! Which made me SO happy! I had to answer a trivia question and it was who wrote the books. Not exactly hard haha.

Then it was time for the actual meet and greet. Now I’ve been to a ton of signings and one thing that is always a bummer is the whole thing with pictures. Because most events get all LAME with photos and practically chop your head off when you even think of touching your phone while meeting the guests. This event was SO refreshingly different. They had a professional photographer taking pictures of us, and us with the cast. SO perfect.

My friends got some pictures too though :)

Picture Nine

Me walking up to talk to Cameron Monaghan, who plays Mason in the film. He was SO incredibly sweet. He introduced himself, like “Hi I’m Cameron” and me, being insanely awkward, I just went “I know!” in a squeaky voice.

Picture Nine Point Five

I think I’m discussing my tattoos with the cast. I was talking to Cameron and Lucy Fry when Dominic Sherwood noticed my Deathly Hallows tattoo and then Zoey Deutch (MY LOVE!) noticed my Divergent tattoo, and then I decided to show them the rest haha. It was funny!

Picture Nine Point Seven Five

I think this was when I told Zoey that I had a massive crush on her and Dominic started laughing and it was just all fun. Straight up, I do have a crush on Zoey. She was so sweet. I was like “I have a crush on you” and she was like “I have a crush on you too!” which I know she only said to be nice but pssssh I’ll never live it down haha.

Picture Nine Point Nine

It’s kind of blurry but you can kind of see me hugging Zoey Deutch. Basically the best thing that happened that night. I died.

Picture Ten

The beautiful professional picture of me with the cast: Sami Gayle (Mia), Dominic Sherwood (Christian), Zoey (Rose), Lucy (Lissa), and Cameron (Mason). I was so excited that we got two more cast members in the addition of Cameron and Sami!

Picture Eight

The photographer caught my hug with Dominic, which made me so happy. SO freakin cute.

After the actual meet and greet, we all converged to charge our phones and basically freak out about how awesome it was to meet the five of them. We waited a bit to go back, because we wanted to grab some extra posters for some giveaways (keep an eye out this weekend!) and then we got to take some selfies with the cast, which is always fun!

Picture Seven

The absolutely GORGEOUS Dominic Sherwood. He was absolutely amazing as Christian. His eyes are mesmerizing. I can’t handle his eyes.

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The super adorable Cameron Monaghan :D

After the mall tour stop, Sylvia, Erin and I met up with our friend Marla in Hollywood at this club called Lure to attend the SUPER awesome music afterparty, where the cast was going to make an appearance, and where Iggy Azalea performed as well. It was SUPER fun. We danced, and partied, had some free drinks (with red bull, which was SUPER weird haha and made me hyper).

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Sylvia and I! We were so silly and accidentally grabbed drinks with whiskey in them. If you’ve never had whiskey before, its absolutely disgusting. We tried to handle it but…yeah, that didn’t go well. So we ditched the drinks and went to go get better ones. As we’re walking up to the bar, we realize the cast had arrived. It was so loud and Sylvia was pointing something out to me, which I thought was Dominic Sherwood. I was like “yes, I know, he’s there, he’s hot, we just saw him” and she was like “No, Sara, its Danila!!” and I basically fainted with excitement.

We weren’t expecting Danila to appear because he had just flown in from Russia. You could tell he was feeling tired and laidback, just in jeans, t-shirt and hoodie and he was hanging out with his friends. I was nervous and anxious to interrupt him but I knew if I walked away, all my fangirls friends (and YOU guys) would never let me live it down.

Picture Eleven

So I asked Danila for a picture and a hug and it was awesome. I didn’t think it was possible but he is even better looking in person than in the pictures. Seriously guys. Swoon!

Then I spent the next few minutes stalking the rest of the cast to get some selfies with them!

Picture Twelve

Me and the beautiful Lucy Fry!

Picture Thirteen

I love this picture of me and Sami Gayle. I love that she plays Mia, who is SUCH a bitch, but she’s such a sweet person. Isn’t it funny how that works out haha.

Picture Fourteen

I was SO determined to get a picture with Zoey and I got one! She is too beautiful for life.

Picture Fifteen

They introduced the cast on stage, and I had to share this picture because Zoey looks so cute! She is seriously a goofball.

Picture Sixteen

Then Iggy Azalea performed. I honestly had no idea who she was, and she’s not really the music I listen to AT ALL but she was seriously so pretty and so charismatic on stage and I super enjoyed it. It was fun to dance to, and I was hopped up on some red bull haha.

Picture Seventeen

My poster! Signed by Zoey and Lucy on top, and then Dominic, Sami and Cameron on the bottom!

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All in all, Monday was a SERIOUSLY successful day! I had a blast, and meeting the cast and hanging out with my friends all day. I got no sleep, barely ate, and was SUPER exhausted by the end of the night but it was so so so worth it. And the next day was the premiere. Come back later for the recap of that event!

To see all the pictures of the event, check out the album on Facebook here.

The Golden Lily: A Bloodlines Novel Review

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The Golden Lily by Richelle Mead  

8709523

You Can Find the Books At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, nurse one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives.
Sydney would love to go to college, viagra sale but instead, cost she’s been sent into hiding at a posh boarding school in Palm Springs, California–tasked with protecting Moroi princess Jill Dragomir from assassins who want to throw the Moroi court into civil war. Formerly in disgrace, Sydney is now praised for her loyalty and obedience, and held up as the model of an exemplary Alchemist.

But the closer she grows to Jill, Eddie, and especially Adrian, the more she finds herself questioning her age–old Alchemist beliefs, her idea of family, and the sense of what it means to truly belong. Her world becomes even more complicated when magical experiments show Sydney may hold the key to prevent becoming Strigoi—the fiercest vampires, the ones who don’t die. But it’s her fear of being just that—special, magical, powerful—that scares her more than anything. Equally daunting is her new romance with Brayden, a cute, brainy guy who seems to be her match in every way. Yet, as perfect as he seems, Sydney finds herself being drawn to someone else—someone forbidden to her.

When a shocking secret threatens to tear the vampire world apart, Sydney’s loyalties are suddenly tested more than ever before. She wonders how she’s supposed to strike a balance between the principles and dogmas she’s been taught, and what her instincts are now telling her.

Should she trust the Alchemists—or her heart?

 

My Review:

Please keep in mind, while there will NOT be spoilers for The Golden Lily in this review, there will most likely be spoilers for Bloodlines. You can read the review for that book here. There also will definitely be spoilers from the Vampire Academy series. 

This series just keeps getting better and better. With Golden Lily, you really begin to see the changes that are going through the main character, Sydney, and I think that’s a huge basis for the entire series. The Sydney that we meet in VA is someone who is willing to help out the right people, in that she helps Rose, but she’s also very adamant in her ways. She was raised by the Alchemists. She deals with Moroi because she has to, but she still finds them frightening and unnatural like Strigoi, and she feels the same about dhampirs too. She’s ingrained in this, and she is scared of it as well. I love that in this novel, you start to see the breakdown of that. She is still scared, definitely, but she is learning. Being around two Moroi (Jill and Adrian), and a dhampir (Eddie) really starts effecting some change in her, which really is going to effect the story later.

Plus, Adrian. Oh, Adrian. You can tell even more in this novel how insanely crazy he is about Sydney, and she just doesn’t see it all. I spent this entire book just dying for her to figure out, but I knew she wouldn’t be okay with it. A human and Moroi? No way. Not in Sydney’s life.

But I love the direction the story is going on. It seems like there are different conflicts in each book. In book one, it was Lee and his desire to become a Strigoi again. In book two, it was the Warriors of Light (tiny baby mini spoiler there). Which seems kind of weird, but I don’t think so, not when I’ve read book three. I think that each step in the story is creating a larger picture in the transformation in Sydney’s personality, her views and her beliefs and I think that’s where the story is leading. I think she’s beginning to transform and that her transformation is part of a larger picture. Just a guess there but thats what I’ve been getting and I’m definitely enjoying it. I think a lot more is going to be revealed in the later books and I love that.

I’m not going to lie, the last few pages of the novel were my favorite. I felt a great moment of triumph and then the quick pain of disappointment in a matter of about five pages. It was incredible that it could do that. I finished it at about 3 a.m. and I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to move on to The Indigo Spell SO badly. Just finished that book a couple hours ago (as I’m writing this) and I really enjoyed it as well. The series just keeps getting better and better.

Now I’m off to go read The Fiery Heart, to read more of Sydney and her journey as a closeminded Alchemist to a battle ready girl.

My Rating:

5 out of 5 stars

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Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice Book Reviews

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I don’t normally do dual book reviews but I read this so quickly, case and they sort of blended together, so its easier for me to do that. Also, since then, I’ve read three more books and I need to review those as well, so it would just be easier for me to review them together.

Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead

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You Can Find the Books At:

GoodReads-SB/LS

Amazon-SB/LS

Barnes and Noble-SB/LS

Book Depository-SB/LS

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Please keep in mind that while there will be NO spoilers for these two books, there will be spoilers for the previous four books. You can read the reviews for Vampire Academy, Frostbite, Shadow Kiss and Blood Promise by clicking their titles. 

For Spirit Bound:

After a long and heartbreaking journey to Dimitri’s birthplace in Siberia, Rose Hathaway has finally returned to St. Vladimir’s-and to her best friend, Lissa. It is nearly graduation, and the girls can’t wait for their real lives beyond the Academy’s iron gates to begin. But Rose’s heart still aches for Dimitri, and she knows he’s out there, somewhere.
She failed to kill him when she had the chance. And now her worst fears are about to come true. Dimitri has tasted her blood, and now he is hunting her. And this time he won’t rest until Rose joins him… forever.

For Last Sacrifice:

Rose Hathaway has always played by her own rules. She broke the law when she ran away from St. Vladimir’s Academy with her best friend and last surviving Dragomir princess, Lissa. She broke the law when she fell in love with her gorgeous, off-limits instructor, Dimitri. And she dared to defy Queen Tatiana, leader of the Moroi world, risking her life and reputation to protect generations of dhampir guardians to come.
Now the law has finally caught up with Rose – for a crime she didn’t even commit. She’s in prison for the highest offense imaginable: the assassination of a monarch. She’ll need help from both Dimitri and Adrian to find the one living person who can stall her execution and force the Moroi elite to acknowledge a shocking new candidate for the royal throne: Vasilisa Dragomir.

But the clock on Rose’s life is running out. Rose knows in her heart the world of the dead wants her back…and this time she is truly out of second chances. The big question is, when your whole life is about saving others, who will save you?

My Review:

I am incredibly impressed with how much better each of these books get as the story goes along. I’ve made it clear before: series that go longer than a few books don’t usually hold up. At least I don’t tend to think so. Its hard to continually keep a story going. But Richelle Mead does it, and does it very well. After the complete heartbreak that was Blood Promise, I was immediately hooked back into the story, and finished these two books quickly.

The characters become so much better than what they were in the first four books. They become more complex, they are more than just teenagers. Rose and Lissa and Adrian and Dimitri and Christian, and all of them, its more than just the typical teen problems. They are now so much involved in their world, in the politics and the sort of dramatics that are going on that they just didn’t see when they were in school. I also think this is the novel where they begin to grow up. They are starting to experience things that make them older, wiser, smarter. Rose went through the entire experience in Russia with Strigoi Dimitri, and that has changed her. The journeys that the characters take as Dimitri returns, as a murder occurs and Rose is framed for it, as Lissa embarks on a challenge that will change her life…they all change. I think Richelle Mead really realizes that her characters are not children anymore and she reflects that so much in these last two books.

I also really enjoyed how she wrapped up these novels. I didn’t expect the things that happened to happen. I know that’s very vague but I don’t want to ruin the story in the slightest for those of you who have never read it. I think she creates all this drama, in the unexpected plot turns, like Rose being framed, and Lissa’s…challenge and I didn’t expect the outcome for any of it. I was gripping my Nook in excitement, staying up until all hours to finish the books. There was so much tension, so much mystery to the end, and it keeps you wondering how on earth it was going to end. I honestly didn’t see it coming at all. I also love all the feelings the books gave me. There was so much heartbreak but also romance, and happy endings too. I had these times of emotions that I could barely handle. There is a part with Dimitri, Rose and a little boy….and that part drove me to tears.

I think that Richelle Mead creates an incredible world, with really well developed characters. Her books have it all: action, romance, politics, coming-of-age-ness (yeah, I just made that up), humor, and so much more. It took me years to read these books because I don’t read vampire novels, but these are so much more than vampire novels. In fact, it wasn’t hard for me to forget that these characters were vampires. Her world is wonderful, and I love Rose and the rest of the characters. Its no wonder that she returned to that world for the Bloodlines series. Its addicting and fun, and I am truly in love with these books.

My Rating:

Spirit Bound: 5 out of 5 Stars

Last Sacrifice: 5 out of 5 Stars

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