The Hanging Gardens

I didn’t start listening to Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series expecting deathless prose or incisive social commentary. I just wanted YA fluff to mentally snark my way through while I processed data for my research project. The back blurb placed a female friendship front and center, which made me a bit hopeful that this would be a step above the morass of cookie cutter “[Special girl] fights [supernatural creature] and falls in love with [brooding dangerous man]” novels glutting the market.

I didn’t expect Mead to create a bleakly dystopian society built on systemic prejudice and abuse of unearned privilege.

( The problem is, she doesn’t seem to realize it. )

I still have four pages of notes full of issues I haven’t even touched on yet, so there may be more as I can stomach revisiting it.