Richelle Mead

Richelle Mead is definitely one of my favorite authors. She has an excellent collection of books about the supernatural, paranormal romances, and also strong, independent women.

The Vampire Academy series provides a glimpse into the life of Rose Hathaway, a dhamphir, whom are the result of a human-vampire pairing. Dhampirs are born and raised to protect Moroi, born-vampires, mostly belonging to a line of royalty. Strigoi, who the Dhampirs are trained to protect the Moroi from, are turned vampires that have bled their victims to the death. Once a vampire becomes a Strigoi, they lose their soul and become vicious killing machines. They are unable to go into the sunlight and live solely on blood and malice. Moroi are fed a pint of blood at a time, from living donors and they supplement their normal diet of food and drink with a small amount of blood to remain alive. Moroi are able to go out in the sunlight; however, excessive exposure will weaken them immensely. Dhampirs do not require blood, are able to move around freely in the sunlight, and have all of the strength of a Moroi without the dependency of blood. In the Vampire Academy series, Rose Hathaway is best friends with Lissa, one of the last living members of her royal family-line. Rose and Lissa embark on many journeys together and Rose's hope, after graduating from St. Vladmir's Academy, is to be assigned as Lissa's guardian. During the series, Rose falls in love with her training instructor and the books continue to follow Rose through this forbidden romance.

Additional titles by Richelle Mead include the Georgina Kincaid series, a series about a Succubus and her struggles with finding love at the risk of slowly killing any potential candidates, the Dark Swan series, which tells the story of a demon-fighting woman, who soon embarks on a journey in the otherworld, accidentally becoming queen of the Thorn Land, falling in love with a gentry, the very thing she has trained her entire life to fight, and trying to find a balance between how her life once was and the path she is undoubtedly headed towards, and several other short stories including Blue Moon, City of Demons, and Brushstrokes.

For more information on this author, visit Richelle Mead's home page.