The last book; I have finally made it through the Vampire Academy series. As I read the last line of this book, I was sad that I won’t have another Rose/Lissa book to pick up in a few months and I was wishing this series was longer. Mead did leave the ending open though; here is to hoping she will eventually continue the series because this series has become one of my favorites on my shelf. I will miss this fictional world so much.
Rose Hathaway has gotten herself into many questionable situations but this one, lets just say this was one she never dreamed of being thrown into. Being the accused murderer of Queen Tatiana wasn’t on her list of to-do’s and Rose knew she had to write the wrongs after receiving a letter from the deceased monarch. With the help of Guardian friends, she and Dimitri flee court to find what would clear Rose’s name, reveal who really killed the Queen and change Lissa’s status as “The Last Dragomir”.
I have been thinking about how to write this blog post for a few days now, I want to make it good as this is the last time I will be writing about this series. It always make me sad when I end a favorite series because I have invested a lot of my time in these books and have watched the characters grow up and develop along the way. All good things must come to an end though and I have to give a round of applause to Richelle Mead on creating this world and making unique, fun and a guilty pleasure. I will definitely reread all these books in the future; I don’t go back and read books over very often so that is a huge compliment. Enough of the sad, sappy “goodbye” and lets get to the review.
As this series went on, the books got bigger and bigger; and with good reason. There is so much that happened in this book, I had to take notes on the bigger events that happened. The first thing we come to was Rose in a prison cell for allegedly killing the Queen. We pick up right where the last book left off, give or take a day. There is chaos at court as an explosion goes off to give Rose and her company a better chance at getting away. Lissa stays at court to try and buy her friend some time in finding the true killer and what Tatiana wants her to find… The other Dragomir. The story moves on, quickly and efficiently, to finding Sonya Karp who knows where that person might be and who they are.
Remember from the first book that in order to escape the effects of Spirit, Sonya turned herself Strogi and hasn’t been seen since. Rose and Dimitri enlist the help of Victor and his brother Robert (also a Spirit user) and Sonya is brought back to the living world. As the group gets bigger, Sonya leads Rose to Jill, who is Lissa’s half sister and her hope to take her place as a royal family again. If you remember, we met Jill few books back! Now, Rose and Dimitri have to get Jill back to court and tell who she truly is and clear Rose’s name. Her name is cleared but it costs something she thought she would never lose. As you can see, there is a lot of things going on both at court where Lissa is and away from it; this book was never boring.
Now that I have taken you through some of the larger things that happens in a broad spectrum, lets zoom in on a few. Lissa feels like she is being left out because she isn’t with her friend. Rose assures her that being at court is helping her and it really is; she is taking eyes of the fugitives and putting it on herself by running fro Queen. You can tell it isn’t something she wants to do (she expresses it a lot) but she never stops because of her devotion to her friend. Through the books, that is one thing that you continue to see, Lissa devotion to Rose and vice versa; so much so that she is wasting her time running for a political position that she will never be able to get because he doesn’t have any royal members of her family to support her.
We can skip to the end of the book because this is where all the juicy things happen! While there is a lot that happens in-between, it is small set up for the last few chapter. Rose eventually finds Lissa’s half sibling, Jill, turning their worlds upside down. Of course, it can’t be easy getting her back to court to declare her, that would be no fun to read about! Victor and his brother have other plans; they kidnap Jill to get Rose to do what they want. They aren’t the only ones trying to wipe their slates clean. This takes a huge toll on Rose and she eventually snaps with the help of Spirit. She has been looking in on Lissa from time to time and pulling some of that negative energy from her.
She kills Victor and she is filled with remorse. Dimitri tries his hardest to comfort her but can’t seem to break past a barrier she put up. Pause. Lets talk about those two for a second. These books wouldn’t be complete without a Rose-Dimitri-Adrian love triangle. Rose is still with Adrian but truly, her heart with with Dimitri. She has been trying to to get him to forgive himself for what he did to her and others while he was Strogi. Don’t worry, his struggle is short lived in this book because he is now focused on helping Rose with hers. They eventually decide to forgive themselves (while in each others arms nonetheless) and all of a sudden there is no love triangle. I was hoping they would end up together because their romance even when Dimitri wasn’t human was addicting.
Beware… These next few paragraphs are full of big SPOILERS. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW!!!! When Rose, Dimitri and Jill get back to court, the elections are coming to an end and you can feel the tension dripping from the pages. It stressed me out multiple times and kept me from putting the book down. It was just declared the Lissa has no right to be voted for when Rose and her company comes in, with disguises of course so they don’t add to the riots about to break out. We know Rose too well for that though, don’t we? She reveals Jill to Lissa and the former Queen’s murder to the court. It wasn’t someone who I even saw coming!!!!!! Tasha Ozera. When that came out, I had to muffle my gasp so I wouldn’t wake my sleeping husband. I mean, the author drug us along in the mystery, not giving any hints on who it might be and then drops the bomb. I have to say this was a great reveal.
I think the biggest event in this book was when Rose and Lissa’s spirit bond is broken…. Say what?!?!?! Rose is shot and is very close to death but her strength and will power is why she lived. Lissa did not use spirit to bring her back like the last time she died; that was how the bond was formed. I found myself hoping it wasn’t true and that it was just weak because she was healing. Nope! It is gone forever. I was so depressed for the characters because that is all we (the readers) have ever known them as: connected in their own special way. It was a somber ending but I liked it anyways. Spoilers over
