“Two races of vampires walk our world. One, the Moroi, are alive and wield elemental magical. The other, the Strigoi, are undead and evil—feeding on the innocent to survive. Rose Hathaway—a half-vampire with poor impulse control—is training to be a bodyguard for a Moroi princess. Learning to decapitate and stake is hard enough, but Rose’s real danger may lie in an illicit romance with one of her instructors…”
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll know that I am a Richelle Mead fan, and this is where it all started for me.
I originally read this series right after Shadow Kiss came out, right in the middle of the Twilight craze. I remember being enthralled with the teenage drama, staying up all night at a friend’s house to read the library books that she had checked out. I did it, and I was so sleepy the next day, but I had to know what happened in the next book! It was absolutely worth it for me.
Fast forward 8 years, and I own all of the Vampire Academy books, and all but one of the Bloodlines books. Bloodlines is a spin-off series that follows Sydney and most of the minor characters from the later VA books. I did a re-read of the Vampire Academy books recently, and holy moly, I still love these books. You can see Richelle Mead’s writing getting stronger along the characters who get to grow as people, which is awesome.
It may sound like a cheesy paranormal romance, which it is, but it’s also a fantastic world with an amazing story. Vampire Academy’s 10th anniversary edition comes out in a few days, even though it’s technically only 9 years old – the publishers wanted it to be available for the entire tenth year of existence. It includes several brand new short stories about the first book as well, which I am incredibly excited about!
It also got made into a movie in 2014, which I feel like captured the spirit of the book, if not the exact book. You can watch the movie on Netflix now, so go do it if you’re in the mood for some good, cheesy vampires. Seriously.