NEW! Frostbite (Vampire Academy, Book 2) with Free shipping
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It's winter break at St. Vladimir's, but Rose is feeling anything but festive. A massive Strigoi attack has put the school on high alert, and now the Academy's crawling with Guardians--including Rose's hard-hitting mother, Janine Hathaway. And if handto- hand combat with her mom wasn't bad enough, Rose's tutor Dimitri has his eye on someone else, her friend Mason's got a huge crush on her, and Rose keeps getting stuck in Lissa's head while she's making out with her boyfriend, Christian! The Strigoi are closing in, and the Academy's not taking any risks....This year, St. Vlad's annual holiday ski trip is mandatory.
But the glittering winter landscape and the posh Idaho resort only create the illusion of safety. When three friends run away in an offensive move against the deadly Strigoi, Rose must join forces with Christian to rescue them. But heroism rarely comes without a price...User friendly.
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Customer Reviews
I began this book in a flurry of anticipation--fresh off the reader's high I got from the first book in this series, Vampire Academy--and found book 2 to be another solid, solid YA read. (Score!)
Now that all the character intros are out of the way, this book is allowed to focus on world-building, particularly on the Strigoi threat, which was alluded to in VA, but not really explored. Rose and Dimitri are sent on a training mission, but when they arrive at their destination, they find a house full of murdered Moroi royals and their world-class dhampir guards. The massacre happened during the day and since Strigoi cannot bear the sunlight, this means that they had human help to get at the family. After another large-scale slaying, the whole Moroi/dhampir community is bristling with fear and anger. The students of St. Vladimir's are sequestered at an ultra-protected ski resort during winter break, and most of the aristocracy also shows up, to hold council about how to deal with the unprecedented threat from the Strigoi.
Rose has her own issues, as per usual. She still carries a Statue-of-Liberty-size torch for Dimitri, who keeps his distance from her and seems to be interested in Tasha Ozera, a beautiful, fierce royal who happens to be Christian's aunt and the scarred survivor of a Strigoi attack. No matter how much Tasha shows her preference for Dimitri or how much he seems to reciprocate, Rose can't hate Tasha because she's possibly the coolest royal in existence--she's a martial artist who openly derides the Moroi for hiding behind their dhampir guardians and she advocates the use of offensive magic.
Then there's Rose's sweet and witty friend Mason who isn't bothering to hide his interest in her (especially after she lets their relationship go beyond just-friends boundaries), and the fact that she rarely sees her beloved friend Lissa since Lissa spends most of her time with her boyfriend, Christian. Icing on the awful-cake: Rose's mom shows up, which makes Rose's mommy issues threaten to come to a boil.
I've already come to expect extensive personal drama and plenty of great action from the VA series, and Frostbite delivers. It's more emotionally grueling than the first installment, but it pays great dividends, too. Rose matures a great deal, one-note characters like Mia get to show a different side, and all the plot threads are advanced by the novel's conclusion--nobody's in exactly the same place.
The addition of the new character Adrian Ivashkov is intriguing. Rose is inexplicably drawn to him, though not in a romantic way, she has a conversation with him in a dream, and worries over all the questions he's asking about Lissa. This guy has Significant Side-Character written all over him, and I can't wait to see how he'll behave in the next book.
There's not a lot of Lissa in Frostbite, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Even on her best day, Lissa is just not quite as interesting as Rose, but Rose's psychic link with her allowed for a handy second POV in VA, which is almost absent here. It limits the narrative a bit to only have Rose's eye-witness POV, but it also spares the reader because Lissa spends most of her time thinking lovey thoughts about her boyfriend, which is mostly dull. But we do learn more about her spirit power, which is always interesting. Remember the old Captain Planet cartoon show? All the kids had these great dramatic elemental powers and then there was the one kid who got stuck with having the power of Heart. But Lissa's spirit power is truly boss, and will only get more awesome as time passes.
A note on my pet character: though Dimitri is fantastic, Christian Ozera is my favorite guy in this series, at least when he's not being cutesy couple-y with Lissa. Why is it that they were exciting to read about when they were geting together, but it's mostly uninteresting to see them as a happy couple? Question for the ages, right there. Rose has to team up with Christian in a crisis situation, and that works out tremendously. Rose rocks my socks, and when she works together with Christian and I see the possibility that they could become troublemaking buddies--run in fear, all ye Strigoi.
Flaws? None I'm noticing at the moment. Nice, twisty story + character development + advanced plot = even better than then first book!
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