Series: Vampire Academy #5
Cover:
Genre: YA Fantasy
This is the book for you if you like:
- The Vampire Academy series; don’t be scared off if you didn’t like Blood Promise.
- Love against the odds stories
- Cliffhangers
Summary: (from author’s website)
Dimitri gave Rose the ultimate choice. But she chose wrong…
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 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 she knows in her heart that he is hunting her. And if Rose won't join him, he won't rest until he's silenced her... forever.
Thoughts on covers:
As always, I just can’t picture any cover but the original VA academy covers with the fence as actual VA covers. The others just seem… wrong. To the point where I couldn’t even get myself to pick a third cover to show.
Title:
The VA titles haven’t always made the most sense in comparison to the content of the story, but for a story that so heavily relies on spirit magic, I guess this one is not so bad. I always like how the titles sound mysterious, though, and make me want to read the book.
Characters:
I’ve always loved Rose. I’ve even loved her in Blood Promise, even though she left Lissa to chase Dimitri, because I got how it was her broken heart leading her. But in Spirit Bound, at quite a lot of moments she’s edging the line between self-centred and selfish. It wasn’t enough to make me turn from her of from the series, but it was at times hard to cheer for her happy ending, when I wasn’t sure she still deserved one. I still like her, I just didn’t love her at every point in this book.
Lissa is and will always be my favourite character. In this book, too, she shows so much loyalty and strength – not physical, but spiritual and emotional. She is someone I would love to have in my life and I like every page spend with her. I’m also really liking Adrian. He seems to be so much more mature than he makes himself out to be.
When it comes to side characters, the return of Ambrose was very welcome and I loved the introduction of Mikhail.
Setting:
Most of this book is set at Court, moving it from the Academy setting to another, similar setting. It worked well within the confines of the story and within what we know of the world. I think part of what made Blood Promise so bad in comparison to the other books is that it didn’t have such a definite sense of home, a base to return to.
General story:
A lot happens in this book. After Blood Promise, after seeing that this book had a similar page count, I was afraid there’d again be a lot of senseless filler. But there wasn’t. There is a lot of action and you get sucked into the story from the first page.
The book seemed to be divided into roughly three parts:
- The first eleven chapters follow directly on Rose’s discovery in Blood Promise that Victor could lead her to saving Dimitri.
- The next fourteen chapters delve into what that knowledge might mean for Rose, for Lissa, for Dimitri, for Adrian.
- The last two chapters set up the scenes for the next book
I think it worked; every part had slightly higher stakes, both physically and emotionally. I think the second part was the most important for this book and I loved what it said. I love how the idea of being able to save Strigoi had such a wide ring of consequences, things that Rose had never even thought of in her haste to save the love of her life.
Will I read the other instalments in this series?
I held my breath during the last thirty pages and I can’t believe the cliff-hanger of this book. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much of a “I need the next book now!” feeling as I had after reading this one.
Overall rating: 5/5
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