Read 2: January 24th, 2023

As surprisingly good as my reread of Vampire Academy was in August Frostbite was shockingly bad.  It feels almost impossible to convey how little truly happened in this book. Despite opening with a gruesome murder Richelle Mead fails to capture the tension and suspense a roving band of vampire serial killers should elicit in a story. Instead, this plodding book centres around the most tedious of love quadrangles and barely touches on any legitimate intrigue for the vast majority of its page count. 

I've already said my piece on the squicky teacher-student relationship between Rose and Dimitri in my Vampire Academy review. All I can say here is that Dimitri continues to be a creep in this book. I did find his annoyance at Rose's immaturity incredibly ironic given the fact that any grown man who plays teenage games should be ready to receive teenage prizes. Rose's other romantic entanglements throughout were equally tedious. I found her doomed romance with Mason more annoying than anything. His insecurity and jealousy were grating and his idiotic confidence he could take on a pack of strigoi eye-roll inducing. I was hyped to be reintroduced to Adrian Ivashkov, the resident bad boy of the series, because of my distinct memories of him from this book

12 y/o me thought that scene at the deck was <i>everything</i>... it was not.

But he came off as more skeevy than charming. His aggressive pursuit of Rose despite her consistent rejection and his leering sexual remarks at high schoolers made him a less than appealing love interest.

Outside of the draining romantic subplot one of my biggest disappointments was the complete lack of Lissa in this novel. Rose and Lissa's friendship was the backbone of the first Vampire Academy novel and here Lissa is barely a presence. She appears in scenes, but she and Rose never talk deeply about anything or work together to solve problems. Mead suggests a thread of conflict as Lissa spends more and more time with Christian leaving Rose without any real emotional support, but that thread is never addressed. Moments I thought could have had major ramifications for their friendship

like Rose being forced to be mentally present during Lissa's first time with Christian because of their bond

were never mentioned again and the strain in their relationship in this novel isn't meaningfully resolved on the page.

Mead attempts other elements of intrigue throughout the novel like Rose's tension with her mother. While this thread introduced slightly interesting concepts like the mystery of Rose's father and saw the mother-daughter duo learn to understand each other there was a little too much melodrama for the storyline to fully work for me. It did help that Janine regurgitated the respectability messaging about Rose's sexuality in this installment. 

The introduction of vampire politics in Frostbite had the potential to be interesting but Mead's clunky worldbuilding didn't do the concept justice. Mead's attempt to seed the idea of Lissa as a political power player just made the adults in the novel seem unbelievably dumb as the most basic suggestions from a high schooler were treated as revolutionary ideas. And she lacked the skill to flesh out the vampire monarchy expanded on in this book which left the world feeling simplistic and unrealized.

I will say this book wasn't all bad. The climax of the novel did have legitimate tension. And the character growth resulting from that climax was especially well done. Rose felt legitimately impacted by her experiences and it was nice to see her grow and change as a result of the events of the book.

Ultimately Frostbite was a tedious read. The majority of its page counted centred on boring romantic entanglements and it failed to build on the intrigue of its premise. While it did have its moments it wasn't a great reading experience overall.