A sad goodbye to a YA favorite.
Genre: Y/A, Paranormal, Romance, Mystery
No. of pages: 608
From Goodreads:
They come first.
My vision was growing dimmer, the blackness and ghosts closing in. I swore it was like I could hear Robert whispering in my ear: The world of the dead won’t give you up a second time. Just before the light completely vanished, I saw Dimitri’s face join Lissa’s. I wanted to smile. I decided then that if the two people I loved most were safe, I could leave this world.
The dead could finally have me.
Rose Hathaway has always played by her own rules. She broke the law when she ran away from St. Vladimir’s Academy with her best friend and last surviving Dragomir princess, Lissa. She broke the law when she fell in love with her gorgeous, off-limits instructor, Dimitri. And she dared to defy Queen Tatiana, leader of the Moroi world, risking her life and reputation to protect generations of dhampir guardians to come.
Now the law has finally caught up with Rose – for a crime she didn’t even commit. She’s in prison for the highest offense imaginable: the assassination of a monarch. She’ll need help from both Dimitri and Adrian to find the one living person who can stall her execution and force the Moroi elite to acknowledge a shocking new candidate for the royal throne: Vasilisa Dragomir.
But the clock on Rose’s life is running out. Rose knows in her heart the world of the dead wants her back…and this time she is truly out of second chances. The big question is, when your whole life is about saving others, who will save you?
I’m not sure how I feel about the conclusion to this epic series – on the one hand it was a lovely round-up and concluded in what, to be frank, is the most realistic way. But I wanted and ending that was legendary. After I had put the book down, I was struggling to remember how it all wrapped up… and that’s why I’m so on the fence with the culmination to the Vampire Academy books – I invested a lot of time in these big six books, so I wanted the conclusion to be the ultimate.
Lissa’s position I pretty much pegged in the first book of VA, and that was very satisfying. But Rose… well… she’s a warrior and I wanted a big bang – or promise of more to come. We kind of left her in a way that it trailed off.
But that is about the biggest aspect to ‘Last Sacrifice’ and the VA that bothered me. The rest was damphir goodness! I got the little plot twists that I’ve not come to expect, and that I rarely predict. The overall plot is pretty much easy to guess, but Richelle Mead always makes the journey there so interesting.
I also wanted some more questions answered a little better. More investigation into Spirit users. The fate of the remaining Strigoi. A solid direction for the reign of the new Queen. We get hints, but it felt too uncertain.
I know their journey is still not over, as the spin-off Bloodlines will delve into more of the VA world, and most likely give me some more answers. But I feel VA deserved an ending that resonated with me.
The writing is easy to read and a pleasure to while away an afternoon as always. And considering that ‘Last Sacrifice’ is 608 pages long, it was still a relatively fast read. It did drag a bit at some points, and the pacing isn’t as good as its predecessors – I think mainly because there was so much going on and Rose was in and out of her head as well as Lissa’s, it was difficult to get into one stream of consciousness where the action was ramping up, before you are yanked into another head space.
I think we also lost some of that mystery that we get throughout VA – it was pushed to the side with all the action in ‘Last Sacrifice.’ I wanted to there be a stronger presence of Spirit and it’s mythology/origins. And a bit more on the origin of the species of Moroi and Strigoi. With the introduction of the rebel group who were Traditionalists, it opened the door for this – but Richelle didn’t do anything with that. As too with the mythology/origins of the Alchemists.
So I’m going to have to read the Bloodlines series now to see if Mead will drop me some more breadcrumbs.
A wonderful book, slightly underwhelming ending, but a sad goodbye to our kick ass heroine Rose (by that I mean an end to the series – not that she dies).
Overall reaction: a sweet and sad goodbye
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Casey Carlisle 