Blood Promise : A Vampire Academy Novel by Richelle Mead
RazorBill, 2009. ISBN 9781921518294.
(Ages:12+) Rose
is feeling unsettled at St. Vladimir's. She's tired of having her life
mapped
out for her. Although she's bonded to her best friend Lissa and is
destined to be her guardian she
feels she has no choice in the matter. She also has other bigger fish
to fry.
She feels she must kill her boy friend Dimitri who has now been turned
into an
evil Strigoi.
Rose
leaps off to Russia, Dimitri's birth place (Siberia to be precise) and
expects
to happen upon him at the airport it seems. Does she know how big
Russia is?
Does she speak any Russian? Does it sound implausible? Does she
succeed? Of
course she does. She kicks lots of Strigoi arse
looking for Dimitri and finds a group of people she didn't know
existed, The
Alchemists. They run around after the dhampir guardians disposing of
the bodies
making sure no nocturnal activities are evident to the human
population. How
they don't notice all these wierdos is beyond me,
but I suspect you're not supposed to do a
lot of thinking whilst reading this series.
Rose
of course finds Dimitri's family in a small village in Siberia and is
taken in
as one of the family. Surprisingly they all speak wonderful English so
Rose has
no problems fitting in. She tells the family what happened to Dimitri
and the
village come together for a memorial/funeral service.
Rose
eventually does her usual and treads all over everyone's feelings
whilst
feeling extremely sorry for herself and has to leave the family. She
teams up
with a group of dhampir who hunted Stigoi for kicks. She heads to
Novosibirsk
with them and after becoming leader of the gang and kicking more
strigoi arse
she finds Dimitri, or he finds her and takes her prisoner. Like all
things in
this series her prison is luxurious, beautiful decor, linen,
clothing and food.
Why would a prison be anything else? Rose is caught in a roller-coaster
of
emotions. She knows Dimitri is evil, but does she still love him? Will
he bite
her and turn her into Strigoi as well? I don't need to tell you the
answer,
because you knew what it would be before you read the first chapter.
Similarly
you will be expecting the surprise twist ending!
This
story is riddled with inconsistencies, amazing improbabilities and
unlikely
coincidence but I'm sure it won't matter a jot to the audience this
series of
books has and will continue to hold. Rose like most of her friends and
peers is
brash, spoiled, indulged, beautiful (Rose is more so because she has
bigger
breasts as we keep being reminded all the way through this vampire
soapy) and
to my mind thoroughly unlikeable. It's bound to be popular with the tweenset.
Mark Knight