Review: Vampire Academy #4 - Blood Promise

Crossposting from Feminist Quill, written on August 1, 2015

Title: Blood Promise
Author: Richelle Mead
Year of Publication: 2009
Series: Vampire Academy#: 4
Goodreads Rating (Avg.): 4.37
Goodreads Rating (Mine): 5

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BOOKS 3 AND 4

VA deals with the issue of faith through the perspective of several characters. Moroi society, having as it does its roots in Eastern Europe, is largely Orthodox Christian in their beliefs, and take their religious ceremonies very seriously. And they have good reason for doing so, seeing as they have proof of holiness and lack thereof in the Strigoi, who cannot enter holy ground.

Personal faith, however, varies from individual to individual as it is wont to do in any society. There are the religiously devout, like Lissa (don't you just know she's going to be religiously devout, goody two-shoes that she is?). There are the agnostic, like Rose, who has an agreement with God - she'll believe in Him, barely, so long as He allows her to sleep in on Sundays. There's Dimitri, whose faith is expressed more along the lines of a place to find peace in, and maybe hope for forgiveness for all of the killing he's done. I mean, sure, he's been killing Strigoi, but it's killing nonetheless. I love Mead for making this distinction - for pointing out that it's not home-free just because you're killing monsters - because the moral consequences of your actions always affect you, the actor, and no one else. Snuffing out a life, regardless of the kind of life it is, will always have its effect on the snuffer (and not the snuffee).

And then there are the like's of Christian 'Tragic Backstory' Ozera. Not only does Christian regularly go to church, but he also spends most of his lonely  life hanging around the church in a half sarcastic, half sincere effort to show people he hasn't voluntarily gone Strigoi yet, like his parents did.

If Shadow Kiss was the coming of age novel in the VA series, Blood Promise is your first job - nerve wracking, too much responsibility, and it suddenly feels like you're making too many mistakes. Life after eighteen is overwhelming - and so is Blood Promise.

This book also deals seriously with the concept of forgiveness, and tests the line between the lengths to which one can go and still be forgiven, and the point of no return.

After learning that Dimitri was forcibly turned into Strigoi, Rose drops out of school and leaves on a personal mission. She thinks constantly about a conversation they'd had way back in Vampire Academy, where both she and Dimitri had come to the conclusion that should they ever be turned Strigoi, they'd want to be killed rather than live as a merciless killing machine. And she's on her way to fulfilling Dimitri's wish.

Blood Promise demonstrates how unprepared Rose is for the real world. This is despite having numerous Strigoi kills to her name, and already being one of the best guardians in the Moroi world.

She has no idea where she might find Strigoi, or where Strigoi Dimitri may have gone. She has a notion that he might have returned to his native Russia, but he only mentioned the name of his hometown once, and she doesn't remember it. In Russia, she sets about the most blunt and messy manner of finding information - hoping for blind luck. And her first break is Sydney Sage.

Rose's ignorance about her world extends to ignorance about the Alchemists, an organization of humans whose aim is to ensure that the human world stays oblivious to all the vampires running around. If Sydney is anything to go by, the Alchemists are extremely religious and disgusted by vampires, are extremely intelligent, and have access to chemicals that allow them to instantly destroy dead bodies. With Sydney's help, Rose reaches Dimitri's hometown and meets his family.

I was struck by the callousness and self absorption of Moroi society, as it becomes clear that no one has bothered to let Dimitri's family know of his fate. In the absence of a better explanation for why's there, Rose allows them to assume that she came exclusively for the purpose for breaking the news to them. She blends into their family, treated as one of their own, a sister to Dimitri's sisters, - especially to Viktoria, the youngest - an aunt to his nephew, and a daughter to his mom. Her relationship with Olena Belikova reflects on her relationship with Janine Hathaway. Olena is the mother Rose has always wished she had - the mother who raised her children herself, and who was there for them all their lives.

It's a pleasant fantasy, but it doesn't last very long for the obvious reason - Rose is Janine Hathaway's daughter through and through. It does, however, take an intervention of sorts from Yeva Belikova - Dimitri's ancient and crochety grandmother and an alleged witch - for Rose to finally shake herself out of her complacency and return to her quest.

On the other side of the world, the rest of the Scooby gang is steadily running itself into the ground. Without Rose around to take care of Lissa, she basically sets herself on a steady downward spiral (something we eventually learn isn't completely her fault). Insane levels of partying, alcoholism, vandalism and cheating-on-Christian ensue under the influence of newcomer royal Avery Lazar. Christian reacts in typical fashion - he dumps her because he's hurt and insecure and goes off to brood. Adrian is Adrian - drunk or hungover except for when he's checking in on Rose's dreams.

I've talked about Rose being able to see into Lissa's mind working as a beautiful narrative device before, but nowhere in the series is it as wonderful as it is in Blood Promise. This is because Blood Promise is the only book in the series where Rose and Lissa are leading completely unconnected lives, and we get to keep simultaneous tabs on both their stories without needing a POV switch.

Alright, so I've stalled enough. It's time to face up to the dark, dark stuff. So yes, Rose finally meets Dimitri. Dimitri the Strigoi. He's powerful and terrible, and the encounter is a total sucker punch for her. Despite all of her preparation, she's not ready. She's just not ready.

To her credit, she tries to kill him. But the perfect moment is already past, and she's knocked unconscious and captured. And the next portion of the book is a feminist critic's personal hell.

The books so far have repeatedly emphasized the fact that strigoi are unnatural, undead and soulless, but Blood Promise drives that fact home like nobody's business. The Dimitri Rose now confronts has no emotion, no feelings. His only motivation is power (funny how that works out isn't it? If the desire for power doesn't come from our souls, where does it come from?) and the only thing he recognizes is strength.

It is this respect for strength that prompts him to spare Rose's life. Instead, he wants to awaken her - turn her into strigoi - so she can help him take over the strigoi crime underworld. Predictably, Roserefuses, and so he sets out to persuade her through a combination of drugging and brainwashing her, along with emotional and sexual manipulation. He dresses her up like a doll, buys her expensive trinkets, and drinks her blood over and over again.

Eventually however, she manages to retain her sanity for one precious moment - and that's all it takes for her to manipulate him into not biting her for a change, to fight the severe withdrawal symptoms, plan and execute an escape in her weakened state, and kill all the strigoi in the house on her way out.

Well, all of them but Dimitri.

Since the book has been following not one, but two storylines, there's one more action filled climactic sequence to be resolved before it can end, and I'm going to be a little presumptuous here and call it unique. A beautiful, wonderful and completely unique mess of a scene involving no less than four Spirit users, three shadowkissed and bonded individuals and incredible amounts of Spirit compulsion being wielded. Needless to say, it ended in the permanent institutionalization of three participants as they were now completely and criminally insane. (And indeed, how else could that scenario have played out, eh?)

Blood Promise ends with a shell shocked and traumatized Rose returning to St. Vlad's and re-enrolling in her classes, and with a very shaken but recovering Lissa making her promise that the next time she goes off on an insane adventure, she'll take Lissa with her. It marks a heart warming end note to a very violent book by returning to the classic foundation of this story: the strong and unbreakable friendship of two girls - each incredibly strong in her own way - who'd die for each other.

Up Next: Vampire Academy #5 - Spirit Bound