The rumors are true.
They are back. Princess Vasilisa,
a Moroi royalty and Rose Hathaway, a dhampir guardian novice are back in the
academy after escaping 2 years ago.
Nobody knows why they escaped. Some say it’s because one of them got
pregnant and had an abortion…well, welcome to Gossip Girl! I mean Vampire
Academy.
Going thru Vampire Academy is like walking through the halls
of Vampire Knight. Sort of. There are
academic buildings, dormitories and lots of space. There are also two types of
students, the dhamir novices and the Moroi.
The Moroi are non-immortal, capable of child bearing vampires, royalty
and non-royalty. If you’re a part of the
12 ruling vampire families, you’re a royalty Moroi. The Dhampir are half-Moroi
and half-human. They have enhanced strength
and senses from vampires and endurance from humans. They, unfortunately, cannot
get pregnant by having sex with their own kind.
Unlike Vampire Knight, the non-vampires,dhampirs, do not scream their
heads off when they see a Moroi. They
train to be their guardians. They also don’t have night and day classes, they
have similar schedules. They have common
classes, like math, and specialized ones, like fighting classes for
dhampirs. But what they do have in
common is a threat from a different kind of vampire, the Strigoi. Strigoi’s are the immortal vampires. They are either Moroi, dhampir, or human
turned vampire. The structure is where
vampire knight ends. The atmosphere of
vampire academy is more like Gossip Girl.
There’s gossip, jealousy, high school revenge, flirting, make out
sessions, love triangles, family issues.
They also have the usual cocktail of
hot-teacher-you’d-wanna-make-out-with, the witty and dependable guy who’s
seriously crushing on you, a famous hot guy who wants to get under inside your
pants, he outcast bad boy, the social climber, a Selene and an ass-kicking
Blair. I think of Rose as an ass kicking
version of Blair. Hot, sensual,
opinionated…without the cute headbands and more in tune with the rebel-phase
Jenny fashion.
I’m no longer into vampire novels. After Bram Stocker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s
Vampire Chronicles, I’ve never picked up a vampire novel till Vampire Academy.
Why? Coz I like my vampires dark, rough and sensual but not so love sick. And I
don’t like them vegan. I can stand 1
vegan vampire but not more than that. So why this after 12yrs? Vampire academy
isn’t rough and dark. It’s far from Anne Rice’s vampires. I’m a
school anime fan so a novel about vampires in one school was inviting. I also got curious coz of the reviews I read comparing
this to Twilight. (I never read that series coz of the sickening hype it got at
our office when the books came out here in Manila but I watched the movies.
Fine, I pretended to read book one but only got into 2 chapters at the
beginning. I crack sometimes under peer pressure. I also read a few pages in the middle and a
couple of chapters in the end. Just in case they quiz me on it.) I wanted to see why some people would compare
them when they seem so different. So was
it worth picking up? I got the anime-ish
school story that I wanted. It didn’t
have tense-action levels that I was expecting but it is a good intro for the
series. It gives familiarity, a people
map of the academy. It’s a quick
read.
Vampire Academy book 1, for me, is a novel about school life
not much about vampires in a school. I
sometimes forget that Moroi’s are vampires.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing tho. I think it even made my reading
experience more enjoyable coz I didn’t get stuck with my vampire biases. I was able to form biases/opinions more the
character’s character. Like Mia should
get punched more, like how I don’t get Mason’s flirting, Rose and Dimitri
should already do it, Lissa being too nice ( it seems fake to me LOL!). I’m not crazy about this book but I like it
enough to continue reading the series.
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