Warning: This is a discussion post and will absolutley contain spoilers. If you have not read Bloodlines by Richelle Mead yet, I suggest you skip this post for now and head over to the review.

After writing the review for Bloodlines a few days ago, I’m itching to talk to some people about it. Part of this I think comes from the need to justify myself for not being head over heals in love with this story. It was pretty well received by the YA community, which isn’t surprising since it’s a spin-off of the wonderful Vampire Academy series.

My main issue with this book is that it’s all told from Sydney’s perspective. I didn’t like Sydney at all when she was a supporting character for VA, and while I like her more now, I don’t like her enough that I’d want to sit down and hang out with her, so reading from her perspective can get a little stagnant at times.

My secondary issue (and I promise, I’ll only ramble about these two), is that the book sometime comes off as a convenient way to do something with a bunch of leftover characters from the original series. I was willing to accept it for the most part until the end where we saw that Sonya (okay, this actually ties in pretty nicely) and Angeline Dawes would be joining the cast for the next book. It just seems so forced. It worked well enough, but it would have been nice to see some new characters have lasting roles in the series rather than just being plot devices for the story.

To be fair… the good elements should be discussed too. There were a lot of aspects I liked (the plot, the writing, the pacing), but those two other things just kept bothering me at all the wrong times. I did think the whole idea of magical tattoos was cool, although a little trivial when compared to VA’s plots but it was handled well in the writing and I definitely enjoyed the mystery.

So, what did all of you think? Can you convince me that Sydney is all kinds of awesome? What do you think of all the potential romance floating around?