Welcome to Gaia! ::

I was rather disappointed with its cliche ending.

Everyone's always disappointed with the ending of the series, there's really nothing Mead can do that would make it 'good'.

I honestly think it was the best book of the series. Good pace, predictable to a point, then a completely unseen climax - at least for me. I didn't accurately predict the killer, which is kind of disappointing, but at the same time a testament to how well she actually prepped for this.

One problem; she named him Mikhail Tanner again. AT LEAST BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR MISTAKES, WOMAN!

As usual, there was the trademark Mead completely-useless-except-for-the-fluffy-feeling-I-get-when-I-write-cliche-and-unnecessary-scenes moment. I actually found the entire previous two books wholly unnecessary. Particularly Blood Promise, which could have been summed up in one sentence: Abe is Rose's father and there is a possible way to kill strigoi. I mean, COME ON! She ended up right where she was at the beginning of the book. Useless circle used to introduce unnecessary characters? I think so.

I digress. Other than that... Interesting. I actually enjoyed it immensely, which surprised me considering I had a serious mental debate about spending a whole eight dollars on it. And if there was a cliche ending, Adrian would have been happy. And everyone would be peachy... Which, as Adrian points out, is not the case. So, your complaints aren't really valid.

Overworked~

By all means, define it. And what do you mean by 'In this case'?

As far as I'm aware, having a cliche ending entails that all the characters are happy with their situation and all the problems are solved nicely, with no casualities - so to speak. The book ended with only Rose and Dimitri truly happy about things. The love interests ending up together isn't a cliche, it's just called plot.

So tell me, do you write stories, or are you simply a poet?

Hmmm... Well, you have to consider that people - readers - always want the same thing. We expect certain things to happen. As creative or insightful as it may be to deviate from the cliche, readers will hate it. You're garunteed at least half of your audience will enjoy something if it follows a baseline they're used to. If you change your baseline to make it more interesting, you're garunteed that 75% of your audience will hate it. This is very specifically detailed if you try to publish a romance book. First encounter with the love interest must be on page five, first romantic encounter with love interest must be on page thirty.... They're pedantic about it.

Actually, when I first read VA, my first thought was 'ameteur'. It read like a fanfiction - no consistency, no pace, predictable. I already knew Dimitri and Rose woud get back together - in fact I'd pretty much predicted the entire book except for the murderer, so that was the only reasonI read the book. It was the only plot line I was focusing on, which is probably why I considered it the best book. You're an Adrian fan, aren't you? That was kind of a hopeless cause. The protagonist very rarely ends up with the second guy. The only writer I've ever encountered who managed to get her main character to fall in love with another character - successfully - was Tamora Pierce.
You'll notice that fanbases around characters tend to be larger when they're supporting the first love interest. As a writer, you always try to make the majority happy.

Yeah. That's why most people hate the final book of a series; it ended.

Well, you know, Mead is a rather disappointing writer. You really shouldn't have expected anything else.

And I make this point once again - it wasn't really a cliche, it was plot. Only good one she's ever written, in fact.