Blood Promise (Vamp Academy 4) by Richelle Mead

Synopsis

Rose Hathaway's life will never be the same.

The recent attack on St. Vladimir's Academy devastated the entire Moroi world. Many are dead. And, for the few victims carried off by Strigoi, their fates are even worse. A rare tattoo now adorns Rose's neck, a mark that says she's killed far too many Strigoi to count. But only one victim matters ... Dimitri Belikov. Rose must now choose one of two very different paths: honoring her life's vow to protect Lissa—her best friend and the last surviving Dragomir princess—or, dropping out of the Academy to strike out on her own and hunt down the man she loves. She'll have to go to the ends of the earth to find Dimitri and keep the promise he begged her to make. But the question is, when the time comes, will he want to be saved?

Now, with everything at stake—and worlds away from St. Vladimir's and her unguarded, vulnerable, and newly rebellious best friend—can Rose find the strength to destroy Dimitri? Or, will she sacrifice herself for a chance at eternal love?

Review

The book opens with Rose in Russia, seeking the damphir town called Biai, where she hopes to find Dimitri, and carry out her quest to kill him and thus release him from the life of a strigoi, which she believes he wouldn’t want to live. Along the way you meet Sydney an Alchemist part of a group of alchemist who work for the moroi & damphirs, clearing the mess they leave behind (dead strigoi). We also meet Abe the Smey (or snake), who seems to have fingers in a lot of pies some not even legal, and is the focus of a great twist at the end of the book. There are some really good new characters introduced in this book, which I hope will resurface in future storylines.

The first half of the book spends a lot of time on Rose’s quest as she finally travels to Biai and meets Dimitri’s mother, grandmother and sisters. Although this section focuses on Rose’s struggle over the loss of Dimitri and the need to hunt him down, in places I felt it was a little too overdone. I know there was a need for this part of the story, but it could have been condensed quite a bit especially as I was desperate to reach the section where Rose finally comes face to face with Dimitri.

Dimitri was always a dark handsome badass through and through, now he’s a strigoi, he has a new cold lethal edge to him, which Rose finds difficult to reconcile herself with. I love the new Dimitri, so dark and dangerous, he’s definitely got to develop further in the next books!  Richelle as usual throws a curved ball/twist to events, when Dimitri wants to turn Rose into a Strigoi. I’m not going to say what happens here as I don’t want to spoil the book for you, but lets say it becomes a very interesting read!!

Despite insurmountable odds (some a tad unbelievable)Rose finally returns to St Vladimir's and there are more twists and turns than ever which keeps you hooked needing to read the next book for answers. Richelle  can totally turn events on there head and when you thought the story was going a particular way, it goes off on a complete tangent. She is great at doing this at the end of her books, making sure you’ll go back for the next book, as there are so many questions you need answering.

There are points in the book which are a little too long, and some impossible events that you just can’t quite believe would happen, but that’s how Richelle writes. Another positive for me personally was that I wasn’t left devastated, like at the end of the last book Shadow Kissed. What I didn’t like was the constant side by side storyline where it required Rose to constantly slip into Lissa’s mind to keep that side of the story going, it wasn’t really that interesting, as in my opinion Rose and Lissa together make for a much stronger storyline. There were also a lot of flashbacks going on between Rose and Dimitri as well, some of which had great inconsistency with what you knew already story wise and some you’d never heard of. I know you have to pad out the storyline, but this could be better.

Overall a good book, but not as good as Shadow Kissed which left it’s readers devastated at the loss of Dimitri. I think that as the last book was such a good one, it needed a brilliant book to follow it, unfortunately this isn’t it, so lets hope book five improves the storyline and reaches the heights of Shadow kissed. In saying that this is an ok book, and I would definitely say, stick with it and read to the end of the series.

I rate this book