Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was asked to review this last instalment of Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series which meant I needed to read all the previous titles also so that I knew what was going on. Maybe this intensive amount of teenage vampire fiction reading made me a little less than receptive once Last Sacrifice rolled around, maybe it was trying to plough through it despite having some major impediments to reading (I am looking at you, Evelina) or maybe it was just because it was not very good but whatever the reason, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed Last Sacrifice.

For each of the books, I would start off being irritated by the prose which I realise is written for teenagers but also sounds like it has been written by a teenager too. I would remember how arrogant the protagonist Rose could be (although I will take that over the insipid, a-little-too-self-depricating-such-that-I-don’t-believe-it Bella from Meyers’s Twilight Saga). For the other books in the series though, despite my better judgement, I would find myself getting involved in the story enough that I could put these peeves to one side. Last Sacrifice unfortunately seemed to have a large portion of the book which had Rose sitting around a lot. Her geographical separation from her best friend Lissa means that she has to use her bond – a supernatural link that allows her to see and hear what Lissa says, does and thinks – for protracted periods, ostensibly in order that we as readers can see what is happening back at Court while Rose is away.

The overuse of this plot contrivance dilutes the drama and emotion and as such, I found myself not really caring about the relationships which were in the balance i.e. the Rose / Dimitri / Adrian triangle and the frankly dull and predictable Lissa and Christian pairing.

Now I do need to be a little fair and acknowledge that I am not the target demographic for this series and despite all its flaws, I still found Mead’s writing far superior to Meyers’s. I think I will stick to Shiver author Maggie Stiefvater for my supernatural teen fiction since the quality is far superior and Gail Carriger‘s Parasol Protectorate series for my grown-up vampire / werewolf action. I will be reading Linger and Changeless respectively just as soon as I have de-vampired a bit.

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