Vampire Academy: Last Sacrifice – Richelle Mead
Pages: 584
Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)
Release Date: 7th December 2010
Other Titles in the Series: Vampire Academy, Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound
It all comes down to now.
The queen is dead and the Moroi world will never be the same.
Rose Hathaway is awaiting wrongful execution and there exists only one man who can stall this terrible fate. Rose must look to both Dimitri and Adrian, the two great loves of her life, to find him.
With her best friend, Lissa, in a deadly struggle for the royal throne, the girls find themselves forced to rely upon enemies and questioning those they thought they could trust.
But what if true freedom means sacrificing the most important thing of all?
Each other.
Before I start raving about how amazing Last Sacrifice is, I should warn you not to read this review if you’re not up to date with the Vampire Academy series. I won’t include spoilers for this book, however.
As the last book in one of my favourite series, there was a lot hanging on Last Sacrifice. But Richelle Mead has never let me down before and she most definitely didn’t this time. I was captured from the very first sentence and spent most of the novel tense and on edge.
Now Rose is one of my favourite fictional heroines and this made the emotional trauma of the last two novels difficult to read so it was so good to see her back on form. Kind of. She is such a fighter and she rarely lets anything get to her. Her strength is unbelievable and I can see why both Dimitri and Adrian love her. Speaking of Dimitri, I love him too so I was very pleased to see him back on godly form after Spirit Bound. They are so perfect together!
As well as the usual action and drama that comes with a Vampire Academy novel, there was also lots of complex world development to do with the laws and politics of the Moroi world. Rose’s world is definitely one of the reasons why i love this series so much. There were so many little side stories and facets to the mythology that just kept adding more and more depth to the novel. Although my focus was definitely on Rose and Dimitri’s relationship.
And boy did their relationship develop! There were some moments of serious sexual tension between them that literally set the pages alight. I have championed their relationship from the beginning but Last Sacrifice provided the added complication of Adrian being Rose’s boyfriend. There’s also Sydney’s continued presence, which I didn’t expect, that kept interrupting them at crucial moments. So frustrating! The only other thing that I found frustrating was the repeated scenes at Court through Lissa and Rose’s bond. Although i know they were crucial to the plot, i just wanted to know what Rose and Dimitri were up to.
Last Sacrifice is a beautiful, fitting and very surprising ending to an amazing series. I loved every page.
For my 2010 100+ Reading Challenge
Sophie
Beautiful Darkness - Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Pages: 508
Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)
Release Date: 28th October 2010
Other Titles in the Series: Beautiful Creatures
From Goodreads: Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.
Sometimes life-ending.
Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.
Beautiful Darkness is as beautifully written and intensely gripping as its predecessor, Beautiful Creatures.
One of my favourite things by far about this book is the writing. Together, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl have written a novel in soft, languid and lyrical prose that weaves images of Gaitlin and the Caster world seamlessly into your consciousness and bringing it to life. This also contributed to the air of charm that Beautiful Darkness contains with the madcap traditions and ideals of the South.
The Caster world continued to develop in ever surprising ways as the story unfolded. It has so many different facets and sidelines that throw the characters in the opposite direction and alter the story completely. The revelations about the world and characters are built up to with a painfully slow and steady drip of information that never quite fits together until the very last moment.
As well as developments in the world nearly the entire cast of characters had an overhaul in one way or another. Amma continued to amaze me with her never-ending awesomeness; Lena infuriated me with her frequent stupidity; Ridley surprised me in general and the adults had shocks and secrets that really filled them out. There was also a new character, Liv, who I’m still not really sure about.
I thoroughly enjoyed Beautiful Darkness and I’m eagerly awaiting the next instalment of The Caster Chronicles.
For my 2010 100+ Reading Challenge
Sophie
I know that that the title of this post (and the HUGE image) probably gave it away but I've reached 500 followers and I need to say a huge thank you.
Thank you!
Even though I've been largely absent for a while you still comment and check my blog when I do post. It really does mean a lot to me and I can't thank you all enough.
I'm proud to say that quite a few of my first followers and some of the subsequent ones have become friends and you've made blogging for the last year and ten months a pleasure.
Hopefully I'll be posting more frequently now I've settled into my life at university, but I do love it quite a lot and I'm having too much fun so I won't be as present in the blogosphere as I was. Though I will do my best to post at least once a week and keep up with the lovely blogs that I follow.
Thank you again you awesome people!
Sophie
Ghost Town: The Morganville Vampires - Rachel Caine
Pages: 379
Publisher: Allison and Busby
Release Date: 4th November 2010
Other Titles in this Series: Glass Houses, The Dead Girls’ Dance, Midnight Alley, Feast of Fools, Lord of Misrule, Carpe Corpus, Fade Out, Kiss of Death
From Goodreads: The fragile peace between humans and vampires in Morganville is in trouble, and when Claire takes drastic action, she's put under serious pressure to re-establish the barriers that keep the town residents inside, and wipe the memories of those who leave. But working with her half-crazy vampire boss Myrnin means that things don't always turn out as planned ... and as the people of Morganville begin acting strangely, Claire and her friends must solve the mystery and try to put things right. But one by one, her allies are turning on her ... even the ones she trusts most.
It’s no secret how much I love The Morganville Vampires series so telling you that I adored Ghost Town is not going to be remotely surprising.
As the lack of reviews posted on my blog for the last month and a half may have suggested, I’ve been in a bit if a reading slump. I just couldn’t make myself sit down and read a book on top of those I have to read for my course until I saw this on a shelf in Smith’s about a week early and nearly wet myself with excitement. Ghost Town has made me want to read again! It’s so good to be back in dusty Morganville with Claire, Shane, Michael and Eve with still more new twists, turns and unexpected occurrences.
There were loads of scary new changes in Morganville. The fluctuations in power threw the whole town out of balance and confused the world that I’ve fallen in love with over the last eight books, and yet I still adored Ghost Town. It was through these changes that Oliver’s character was further developed, embellishing on all we learnt in Kiss of Death and I was also reminded of how harsh and unforgiving Amelie can be when she’s backed into a corner. But for some reason, I still really like both of them. Even when they’re cruel.
But one of my favourite elements was getting to see how Myrnin was before Claire arrived in Morganville. It was odd and a little unnerving, yet so fitting of the glimpses of insanity Rachel Caine has given us of him. The heartbreaking depth of his feelings for Ada were revealed to such an extent that I just wanted to bring her back for him. Even though she’s crazy. Moments like those didn’t stop with Myrnin, however. There were horrible, heart-wrenching scenes with Shane and Claire and Shane and his dad. Rachel Caine really knows how to pull on the heart strings.
Like I’ve come to expect from this series, Ghost Town ended on a particularly evil cliffhanger. I’m actually dying for Bite Club now.
For my 2010 100+ Reading Challenge
Sophie
