Vampire Academy: The Graphic Novel by Richelle Mead

Adapted by: Leigh Dragoon
Illustrated by: Emma Vieceli

St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger...

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.

So this is my first time reading/writing a review for a graphic novel. To be perfectly honest, the only reason I picked this up is because the south Lanarkshire libraries seem to have every book in the Vampire Academy series apart from the first one (which is pretty stupid). So when I saw the graphic novel in the library today I thought – Well, since I can’t get a hold of the book I may as well just read the graphic novel so that I know what happens and then I can read the rest of the series. I didn’t expect to love the graphic novel as much as I did. The pictures helped my imagination and I loved how some of the scenes were portrayed. The illustrations were beautiful and I enjoyed them.

So Vampire Academy is about this girl called Rose who is a Dhampir and she’s best friends with Lissa who is a Moroi. Rose is also Lissa’s guardian and she has to protect her from the evil Strigoi vampires. 

Rose is such a fantastic protagonist. She’s feisty, stubborn and kick ass. She’s got a brilliant attitude. She had me laughing quite a lot with the things she was thinking. She's so protective of Lissa and would do anything for her.

I loved Lissa’s character too. She was dependant on Rose at the start because of the situation they were in and also because of their bond. I just think she needs to learn to stick up for herself and not let every insult someone hurls at her tear her apart.

And then we have the guys. Dimitri and Christian.

So I loved both of them. They were both just fantastic characters.

Dimitri is the hot older guy that Rose has a crush on. He’s assigned to help her get her training back on track and you can just tell that there is chemistry between them. And then some stuff happened that led to this scene!

And I almost died. I JUST WANT THEM TO BE TOGETHER! They have to be together!

And Christian was just amazing. At first I just thought of him as the weird loner guy, but as the book went on and there were more interactions with him, I started to really like him. You could tell he really cared about Lissa. Christian was such a badass with his fire power! And he and Lissa were just so cute together! 

I absolutely loved the storyline. From the start when Lissa and Rose were on their own to when they were brought back to the Academy and dealing with all of the people there. It was just fantastic.

I loved the storyline with Victor too. I never saw it coming! But it was brilliant. I feel bad about Natalie though. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that someone will punch that bitch Mia in the face. She deserves it.

All in all, this was a fantastic story. I’ll still be trying to get my hands on the actual book though because I still really want to read it! But I will definitely be reading the rest of the graphic novels for the series too. I really enjoyed it!