Review: Vampire Academy #6 - Last Sacrifice
Crossposting from Feminist Quill, written on August 16, 2015
Title: Last Sacrifice
Author: Richelle Mead
Year of Publication: 2010
Series: Vampire Academy
#: 6
Goodreads Rating (Avg.): 4.46
Goodreads Rating (Mine): 5
Title: Last Sacrifice
Author: Richelle Mead
Year of Publication: 2010
Series: Vampire Academy
#: 6
Goodreads Rating (Avg.): 4.46
Goodreads Rating (Mine): 5
Beware: The Inevitable... SPOILERS!
Last Sacrifice is the Fast and the Furious and Die Hard 2: Die Harder all rolled into one of the VA series. And I'm not just saying that because of the inordinate amounts of C4 explosive in this book.
In Last Sacrifice, the gang goes from under-the-radar hijinks to an IN-YOUR-FACE, GOVERNMENT level of hijinks. The Moroi government should really have known better than to put Abe Mazur's daughter in jail and try her for a capital crime. Just saying.
Just as in Blood Promise, the books splits itself to follow two storylines, once again through that unique narrative device of having Rose see through Lissa's eyes. It begins where Spirit Bound left off - with Rose in jail. Thankfully she has all the likely allies, as well as a few unlikely ones now. The least likely of these allies is the ghost of the very person she's been accused of murdering - Queen Tatiana Ivashkov.
The first order of business is - what else? - a prison break. Again. Then again, if these guys could break into Tarasov (aka Most High Security Vampire Prison Ever) and get Victor Dashkov (aka Former Villain of Book No. 1) out, then breaking into the local jail and breaking Rose out should be no problem. And it isn't.
The jail break and subsequent escape puts Rose back in Dimitri's company, thus allowing for a slow healing of their relationship. They meet up with Sydney Sage again - she's been popping in and out of the storyline ever since Blood Promise - and Abe intends for them to lie low while he, Lissa and the rest of the gang work their way through the whodunit back at court.
Rose, on the other hand, takes this time to work on Ghost Tatiana's clue, which relates to Moroi politics and their rather dumbass laws. According to Moroi law, the Council votes on everything, and the Council is made up of the representatives of each Royal House along with the Queen or King. And currently, only 12 out of 13 seats on the Council are being filled, because the Dragomirs have all but died out. Lissa's friends and supporters (read: Christian's aunt, Tasha Ozera) had already pointed out that Lissa deserves her seat on the Council now that she's 18 (Side Note: How did Lissa herself not think of this?). But Moroi politics, it turns out, isn't as simple as all that. There needs to be a quorum - that is to say, a council member has to have at least one other family member in order to be able to stand. Like I said, dumbass law.
And now, Tatiana, of all people, tells Rose that Lissa does indeed have another family member out there. She's not the last Dragomir - that honour falls to her illegitimate half sibling. The identity of this sibling, when it is revealed, is one that we realize has been well seeded. VA is no amateur series of novels written blindly and without forethought. The reader had already met the last Dragomir - way back in Shadowkiss, and said sibling has been popping up consistently throughout the storyline since. Just like Sydney Sage, or Mia Rinaldi, or Tasha Ozera. Even when they're not essential to the plot, Mead does right by her characters. They're all well fleshed out and multi dimensional, and they're never allowed to be forgotten.
To gain themselves time to solve the murder mystery, Rose comes up with a master plan: Nominate Lissa in the election for the new King or Queen. Because while she would need a quorum to be actually elected, she doesn't need one to just run. And so while Lissa is running for queen and trying to exonerate Rose back at Court, Rose is running from the authorities and trying to find Lissa's sibling and thereby legitimize her position with the Council. These girls, always looking out for each other.
One run in with the mysterious (and fairly uncivilized) Keepers, one Strigoi healing, one reconciliation with Dimitri, and a lot of following the paper trail later, Rose is headed right back to Court with all the answers and a very confused Jill Mastrano. Since Lissa outperformed most of the other Royal candidates on the trials, she's just in time to back Lissa's right to be elected.
And also just in time to save Lissa's life, one last time.
Last Sacrifice takes its haunting title very seriously. The last act of the book echoes every part of Rose's life, and how it always comes right back down to Lissa. She started out with a singleminded determination to save Lissa no matter what, and then she learned to question that determination. She learned to set a few, necessary boundaries, but the bottom line remained unchanged. Just as she put Lissa's life over Dimitri's in Spirit Bound, so too did she put Lissa's life over her own in Last Sacrifice.
In fact, her life isn't the only thing Rose sacrifices at the Lissa altar. Present all through the series is the link between Lissa's spirit use and her depression. In fact, on numerous occasions after Lissa weans herself off the anti depressants, both girls have expressed relief that Spirit isn't affecting her as much as it used to. That this is a patent lie is something neither of them seems to want to acknowledge, considering Rose has made sucking that darkness out of Lissa and into herself through the spirit bond something of a hobby.
Throughout Lissa's royalty trials, Rose does this as she watches her friend through the bond. She pulls away the darkness over and over again, putting it away in a quiet corner of her mind. Repression is never the answer - everyone knows that, including these girls, but they don't have the time for anything else at the moment. And so it goes, until Rose snaps and all that darkness comes tumbling out of her.
It's an intensely written moment - chaotic and full of irrational fury. The engaged reader is carried along on the strength of sheer emotion, and despite the words we're reading, we're not actually clear on what's going on until the deed is done and a man is dead.
Having sacrificed the last of her innocence halfway through the book, Rose now, at the end of the final act, gives Lissa the only thing she has left - her life.
The book ends on as neat a note as could be managed under the circumstances. There were, of course, loose ends that infuriated me until I realized a new follow up series was in the works. But, contrary to what my sad ending review may lead you to believe, there are no great tragedies in Last Sacrifice. It's the quintessential triumph-over-evil-in-the-end kind of book. The final chapter puts a cute little bow on almost everything, and for what's left over, [*cough* Adrian *cough*] you get to read the Bloodlines series.
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