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I’m not one for writing reviews. I’ve never been very good at it, I don’t think in a clear and linear manner… which means most people sort of sit there, mouth agape as they listen to me talk. Unless they’re in my family at least… it seems to be a family trait though I got more of it than some.

I’m digressing. I just finished the third book of Richelle Mead’s “Vampire Academy” series. My mum brought them as a part of my birthday present… er. well, that is. She decided that anything with the word “vampire” on it needed to be in my collection and that the books weren’t insanely expensive so she brought them for me and told me they were part of my already passed birthday gifts. She’s a cool Mum sometimes.

I was fully prepared to not like the books the instant I saw what they were about. They didn’t look bad per se – but to be perfectly honest highschool and I didn’t get along with to start with let alone throwing in a bunch of vampires and dhampir’s that weren’t what I knew was traditionally accepted as “proper” for their kind. If there had been werewolves I might have thought another Twilight was on the loose, to be honest. I decided to read them after mum constantly asking me if I liked the books, I had planned on getting around to them eventually but despite my fast reading rate I have a stack of books the size of Mount Olympus that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

So I sat down and started on the first one, Vampire Academy and read through it in a day. At first I was more or less indifferent to the characters – jarred by the difference in the vampires if nothing else. Theres two kinds of vampires in Mead’s Vampire Academy universe – the main ones in the books are called Moroi and they’re alive. One of the main characters, Lissa happens to be one of those but the main character is Rose – A dhampir and Lissa’s to-be guardian. Sort of like a body guard for life, really. I’m not going to go into details about what happens in the books, they’re enrapturing if you can set aside previous thoughts of what vampires are… which for a big vampire junky like me was a little hard to do… but I was won before the book ended.

The second book I was more willing to read, devouring the story quickly as I could – Frostbite still had me a little jarred and being that I read so many books… well I’d be lying if I said I had no idea how it was going to end. But I still felt Rose’s pain when it did end. The thing about these books is that the main character, Rosemary Hathaway is real. I don’t mean that she’s real in the sense of you and I being real… but she is real in her way. Anyone who reads or writes enough will know what I mean. She has emotions that don’t always make sense, she isn’t perfect despite… or perhaps because of good intentions or her occasional lack-there-of. You can feel her pain, her distress, her sense of duty to protect the Moroi and her best friend. You can feel her love and dispair in book three, Shadow Kiss.

In short, they’re worth the read and I can’t wait for the fouth… though I’m not sure I can bare to find out what happens at the same time I know I want too. Her writing is like chocolate.