VAMPIRE ACADEMY -- Richelle Mead

Oh, whither the vampires of yore?

You know, the ones that were eerie. The ones that were sinister. The ones that were more than, well, ordinary people that happen to drink blood.

I'm not a huge fan of vampires, but the ones I've liked have always drawn their seductive power in part from their otherness and from the fact that they never quite tamed, even if they love you.*

I picked up VAMPIRE ACADEMY in large part because I was so disappointed with BETRAYED, and because I thought, "Hey, a finishing school for vampires is a concept that practically writes itself. Surely they can't both get it wrong." Plus, the author is from Seattle, so I read it on the plane to Kansas City on the first leg of my recent journey back to the Emerald City.

The book is about a pair of girls: Lissa, a living (as opposed to undead) vampire princess and Rose, her half-vampire bodyguard, who attend a school for vampires and their guardians in Montana. As the book opens, they've run away from the school, but are quickly found and returned. Most of the plot is concerned with teenage social maneuvering, but as Lissa's strange abilities begin to fray her sanity, it takes on more depth and emotional resonance.

As far as life at a vampire boarding school, Mead doesn't get it wrong, but she doesn't quite get it right, either. It still left me longing for a book with a strong sense of place.

On the other hand, she does get a lot of things right. The narrator's believable as a teenage girl and is possessed of a strong and distinctive voice, the world created is interesting, the love interest is compelling, and there's a genuine and nuanced relationship between the two best friends. Some supporting characters are flat, but others have enough depth to be interesting.

But the only thing that makes the vampires vampires is the fact that they drink blood. Other than that, they could easily be fairies, werewolves or even just humans with magical powers. There's no edge to them. They're just ordinary folks with fangs.

I'd like to recruit Henry Fitzroy, Gerald Tarrant, Joshua York, and Simon Ysidro to teach at the school.

Rating: ***

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*The ideal vampire for me is actually not really a vampire: it's Gerald Tarrant from C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy. Ironically, he does all the things that a vampire should do better than most actual vampires, with the possible exception of Barbara Hambly's Ysidro.