Bloodlines by Richelle Mead - Review

Bloodlines
Author	Richelle Mead
Published Date	2011
Genre	Urban Fantasy
Preceded By	N/A
Followed By	The Golden Lily

Summary

Syndey Sage is still trying to get back in good with the Alchemists, a organization of humans working to protect their species from vampires. After her encounter with Rose (main character from the Vampire Academy series), things just haven't been the same - for her, or for the Moroi world. She is assigned to protect Jill, a princess, who is wanted by vampire radicals for her familial connection to the queen, Vasilisa Drogomir. Together, they and Jill's guardian Eddie attend a local boarding school, where mysterious tattoos give the students unusual effects while Jill tries to live a normal life.

Review

I enjoyed this book quite nice, actually. It took me a long time to get into it, which is typical for me for any spin-off series, be it books or TV shows or movies, especially if I hadn't seen the original series for a while (as I did with this one). However, I do have a few qualms with it; but first, let me talk about the good.

I liked seeing more of the Alchemist's perspective. They're almost similar to a kind of government organization and there seems to be a lot of red-tape involved in doing anything. The strictness of it all explains a bit more of Sydney's actions as did seeing her family life at the very beginning.

Now, let's get into the bad. 

Everyone seems to be falling for Jill. At some points, it even seemed like Adrian was (which wasn't good for me on account of my little Adrian-crush thing I've got going on - what can I say?). This was really annoying to me. Also annoying was how they treated Micha. I can't name a particular action or occurrence, but something seemed off with him. I felt he was almost not needed in the book, but he might be of help later on in the series. These could just be personal biases and whatnot, so I didn't want that to completely hinder my review.

What makes this a 4-star book, though, is how little action there was. Coming from Vampire Academy, I was a little disappointed. Sydney, being an Alchemist with little training or experience fighting, I should have seen it coming.

There was also very little romance, so if that's what you're looking for, I would stay away from the novel. I did sense a little something going on, between two different characters, but they were subtle. Maybe it was just my hoping for it, and not what Mead was going for. Nonetheless, I wouldn't count this as a romance novel.

Even through the bad things, there was a great mystery involved through the tattoos. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, I realized that there were too many pages left for it to just be over¹. The very end was left open for a interesting story and I'm excited to see where it goes, if not a little sad for a character or two.

Overall, it was very good read with only a few annoyances. Mead has done an excellent job with a subject that has seemed to tire out since the first Vampire Academy.  I would definitely recommend it to a friend, however some people might not enjoy it for its lack of action.

-Havityia

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¹ It was almost like when you're watching CSI (or a show like it) and you think that they have the killer arrested, but then you see the clock and realize that there's a good ten minutes left, so that person can't be the bad guy