Book Review: Shadow Kiss

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shadow Kiss is the third installment in the Vampire Academy series. At the risk of spoiling the first two, this story picks up a few weeks after the events of Frostbite, which Rose is still recovering from. Meanwhile, she's having to adjust to a new sort of life: Adrian Ivashkov is on campus and causing trouble, Rose and the other Guardian novices are in the midst of their field training, and Rose's relationship with Dimitri is becoming even more complicated. Little does she know that something is coming, something that will put the ones she loves most--and herself--at risk.


So, Shadow Kiss happened.

This book hit you with the plot twists and turns with the force of a freight train. Everything happened, though most of it happened in the last third, per Richelle Mead standard. So let's talk about it.

Now, if I had read this three years ago, I wouldn't have had any sort of problems with it. Rose is witty and wild, and I feel the same emotions as I read them. Dimitri is sensitive, yet a physical force of nature in all the right ways. I thoroughly enjoy Christian's snark, Adrian's an arrogant-yet-tortured delight, etc.

However, I (at the risk of sounding like an ass) have now taken a bunch of college classes on reading stories critically. And I do have a few issues, specifically with certain technical aspects of the writing.

SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS AHEAD.

SERIOUSLY STOP SPOILERS AHEAD.

I felt that Rose & Dimitri's sex scene was eased into a bit too subtly, in that it sort of read "we kissed, and then it deepened, and then we'd had sex." Also, being a sex scene where actual sex isn't described, it's not as bad as some. You know, the ones that say stuff like "and then we became one" or something similar. However, Richelle Mead does this thing where she works hard to explain people's (Rose's) emotions in a way that you would express them to another person in a conversation. But, since this is a direct narrative, that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I felt like she was telling, not showing (which is a phrase I am shamelessly ripping off from my Fiction Writing classes. Once they told me about it, I can never unsee it in a story).

I also felt like the pacing was a little bit off, at least in the climax. I say it was off, in that I initially didn't think I was reading the climax when it was happening. The scene itself felt like it had been eased into too quickly to be as important as it ended up being, and until a certain twist developed, the big scene before had felt more important and climactic, in that it felt like there was more on the line than with the actual climax.

Sidebar: ALSO SPOILERS MORE SPOILERS LOOK AWAY. I really didn't enjoy how Lissa was at the end. I understand that not everything had been known to her, but seriously? Not agreeing to help out in a serious situation because it would slightly negate what you said earlier to the Queen? And more "seriously?" still, that whole "you love him more than me" line made me clench my jaw. If this bond is so intense and strong, and if Lissa knows Rose so well, she ought to be able to see what's going on, as well as be able to see that Rose is serious on this one, and that it's more than just grief. I get that you're best friends, but you ought to realize that this relationship is definitely far from balanced, and that not everything goes both ways. Okay okay, rant over. It's partially that I naturally feel less strongly about the more passive characters in stories, and also because I'm coming from Rose's POV directly. Continue.

THAT BEING SAID, I did thoroughly enjoy the big twist. I came THIS CLOSE to being spoiled mere hours before I read it, and while I wasn't completely surprised, it still came as a shock. I'm also glad that the plot is progressing in the way I hoped it would, in that the high school element of the stories seems to be fading out and giving way to the big plot that Richelle has obviously been gunning for this whole time. I'm curious to see what new characters we have, and how Rose is going to deal with what's next.

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