CHAPTER 1 RICHELLE MEAD VAMPIRE ACADEMY LAST SACRIFICE

USA Today has the a clip of the first chapter from Vampire Academy Last Sacrifice:

CHAPTER 1

I don’t like cages.

I don’t even like going to zoos. The first time I went to one, I almost had claustrophobic attacks looking at those poor animals. I couldn’t imagine any creature living that way. Sometimes I even felt a little bad for criminals, condemned to life in a cell. I’d certainly never expected to spend my life in one.

But lately, life seemed to be throwing me a lot of things I’d never expected, because here I was, locked away.

“Hey!” I yelled, gripping the steel bars that isolated me from the world. “How long am I going to be here? When’s my trial? You can’t keep me in this dungeon forever!”

Okay, it wasn’t exactly a dungeon, not in the dark, rusty-chain sense. I was inside a small cell with plain walls, a plain floor, and well. .. plain everything. Spotless. Sterile. Cold. It was actually more depressing than any musty dungeon could have managed. The bars in the doorway felt cool against my skin, hard and unyielding. Fluorescent lighting made the metal gleam in a way that seemed almost too cheerful for the setting. I could see the shoulder of a man standing rigidly to the side of the cell’s entrance and knew there were probably four more guardians in the hallway out of my sight. I also knew none of them were going to answer me back, but that hadn’t stopped me from constantly demanding answers from them for the last two days.

When the usual silence came, I sighed and slumped back on the cot in the cell’s corner. Like everything else in my new home, the cot was colorless and stark. Yeah. I really was starting to wish I had a real dungeon. Rats and cobwebs would have at least given me something to watch. I stared upward and immediately had the disorienting feeling I always did in here: that the ceiling and walls were closing in around me. Like I couldn’t breathe. Like the sides of the cell would keep coming toward me until no space remained, pushing out all the air. ..

more here

OMG!!! I have been excited about this book for a while. I’m sad to see the end of the series, but I love Rose. I cannot wait to see how she gets out of this one. And I hope her and Dimitri end up back together because I am a sucker for true love.

What do you think of the excerpt? Does it meet your expectations? Any ideas on how the story will unfold?