I’ve been reading this series (this book being the third installment) due to my fondness for Mead’s series this was spun off of, the Vampire Academy books. These books follow Sydney Sage, an Alchemist who helps keep the existence of vampires secret from the human world, and deals with cleaning up any situations caused by the vampires.
The first book, Bloodlines, didn’t have me reeled in at first, especially with Sydney being so different from kick-ass Rose. However, the second installment, The Golden Lily, improved upon the first greatly, and this book has finally pulled me in, full tilt. I won’t get into the plot too much, so as not to spoil the previous books, but Sydney has started to question the motivations of the organization she works for, and is torn between loyalty and duty versus doing what is right. She sets out to find out more about an Alchemist named Marcus who broke out of his role as an Alchemist. In addition to this, Sydney has been dabbling in learning magic with her teacher Ms. Terwilliger and now Ms. Terwilliger has tasked her with a big task: helping to track down and stop a witch that is killing young girls to keep her own youth. Add this to her regular duties of keep Jill, the princess’s sister safe, and a complicated love life, and she has a lot to contend with.
Mead always has a lot of action going on in her books and she has really ramped it up from the first two books here, and I have to say I like it. I like it a lot. This series also carried over my favorite character, Adrian, from the Vampire Academy series and he is delightfully front and center in this book as well. I won’t say much more – if you have read Mead’s other books or need a fun, slightly soap opera-y series, this isn’t a bad way to spend your time. Not bad at all.
Cannonball Read V 
Mmm…Adrian. He was totally the best character in the Vampire Academy books, followed by Christian. I’ve only read the first one of these so far, and Sidney kind of annoys me. But since there’s two more out now, I guess I should get round to catching up. I do like Richelle Mead’s books (we shall not mention the conclusion to the Dark Swan series, cause that gets me all stabby). I’m looking forward to Gameboard of the Gods as well.
She annoyed me in the first one too, I almost didn’t keep going with the series, but… Adrian. She’s gotten a lot better and Adrian is still awesome. I actually only made it through the first book of Dark Swan and wasn’t really impressed, so I just stopped there. Dare I ask about the end?
I really liked the second and third book. Just google “Shadow Heir”, I’m sure there will be people out there ranting more eloquently than I can about the end. The main character, who was not the main reason I read the books, just makes such awful decisions throughout the book that I just managed to finish it through stubborn rage, in the hopes that things would get better. I don’t even want to rate or review it in Goodreads, it pissed me off so much.
Wow, you aren’t kidding people are piiiiissed. It’s in like every single one of the Goodreads reviews haha! I’m mostly sad to read that Kiyo turns out to be a dick because I liked him in the first book.
Oh dude, he turns out to be such a waste of space. But Dorian is awesome, which is why the last book pissed me off so much.