The Vampire Diaries: Stefan's Diaries #5: The Asylum [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The cover:

I hate Elena but I love Nina Dobrev and Katherine, which means, when I look at this cover, I say to myself that this is Katherine and not Elena, or else I'll dislike the cover. Just a point of view. Anyways, I love all TVD: Stefan's Diaries' covers, for some reason, I'm a huge fan of The Vampire Diaries font style *____*.

The storyline:

I got used to L. J.'s writing style. When reading her books, I embrace myself for a very slow paced beginning, a somehow intriguing middle and a very captivating end. I wish she would change that, but, well, I still love her books!

(p.s: I haven't read neither The Vampire Diaries nor her new trilogy, The Hunters, books. I've heard mostly negative things about them but I'm going to read it anyway because I need to have my own opinion and I also need to read where my favorite TV show came from Smile).

What I loved:

The title perfectly fits the story!
The Prologue and the Epilogue are very good. One of the best things about L. J.'s writing style.
The non-stop fighting between Damon and Stefan is crazy good. I can see why they act like that now in 2012. They've been thru a lot.
Cora, the female protagonist, is amazing. I loved everything about her.
I liked how every now and then, we get to have a glimpse of Katherine. I really like her character because she's unique and mysterious.
The ending was breathtaking, as usual, and now I'm going to start the sequel immediately!
What I disliked:

If there was one thing I would change about the book (all of the books in the series actually), it would be the pacing at first. It always gets boring that I wish I could stop reading it all at once. What keeps me reading is knowing that the best is yet to come.
The characters:

Stefan is sweet and nice but too naïve. I used to dislike him before reading his Diaries, but now, I actually respect him. He's been trying his best at everything but for some reason, he always fails miserably :s.

Damon is the impulsive, seductive and arrogant brother. Sometimes he gets on my nerves, the other times he's just bad charming. Just imagine Ian Somerhalder reading his sentences and acting him and you'll know what I mean Winking smile.

Cora is Violet's sister from the previous book, The Ripper. She is very courageous and amazingly understanding. She kept the Salvatore brothers united and organized. A good friend to them.

Samuel is definitely Klaus <3. I don't hate him at all, in fact, I'm liking him even more. He's rich, mysterious, very well positioned, a blond vampire and Katherine's running from him... Does that remind you of anything?! Yep! I'm like 75% sure he's Klaus.

Henry is Samuel's younger brother. He's impulsive and dead at the end of the book, which sparks the anger of Samuel. But it makes me wonder, if Samuel is Klaus, then who is Henry? Could he be the mysteriously dead younger brother?

Violet was human at first, but now she's a hungry and immoral vampire. She was turned by Samuel and he keeps her around like a pet and she likes it.

James is a new character introduced in this book. He sells witchy stuff to anyone who pays. He helps Damon, Stefan and Cora thru the story and has a very good since of logic.

Favorite quotes:

"May I see?" Cora asked, holding out her hand expectantly.

Damon ignored her. "They could have run a better picture of me, at the very least. That illustration doesn't do me justice at all," he said sulkily as he settled onto the bench next to me and crumpled the paper into a ball. But I could see his hands shaking--the faintest of tremors, so subtle, they would be invisible to the human eye. This wasn't the confident Damon I knew. --- Chapter 1.

I'd thought we'd have to protect Cora, but it seemed Cora was protecting us. Did this dependence on a human to lead us to safety mean we were worse off than we thought? Or was Cora the good luck charm I'd asked for? Either way, I trusted her. --- Chapter 1.

"Thank you for the etiquette lesson, brother. But I don't need to go inside. All I need is to speak with Samuel, man to man. Or, should I say, vampire to vampire," Damon explained. --- Chapter 4.

The more steps we took into the basement, the hotter it became. Damon had been wrong. The tunnel wasn't the closest we could get to hell--the basement of the Magdalene Asylum was. --- Chapter 7.

"Samuel thinks he's so clever, but we know all of his moves now. And that's encouraging. My guess is that we'll kill him and his brat of a brother before the week's out. And then, brother, the city is ours. Or"--Damon scratched his head, as though he were deep in thought--"the city will be mine. And maybe, if you don't annoy me, I'll let you live here, too." --- Chapter 8.

"Really?" Damon's eyes widened. "That's their blood supply. That's brilliant," he said.

"It's awful!" I retorted.

"Right. Of course it is. But just think. No hunting, and so many girls available that they don't feed enough to kill them. I hate to say it, but Samuel knows what he's doing," Damon said grudgingly. "If they weren't trying to kill me, I would probably join them."

I grimaced. I knew Damon wasn't saying it to shock me--he actually would have. --- Chapter 10.

"I'm all in," I said calmly. "And Damon... I'm sorry."

Damon nodded. "All right," he said. In Damon's vocabulary, "all right" was as good as "apology accepted." I decided I'd take it. I had to. --- Chapter 17.

Conclusion:

This is definitely a favorite book of mine. It has action, friendship, family, horror and vampires!

If you love the TV show, I really do recommend this one, but you'll have to start with the first book, Origins, first or you'll be in the unknown in this one Smile.

Outstanding quality quickly shipped and great company to work with and this book was a great addition to the diaries collection

I have read the first four books in the Stefan's Diaries series. I have to say, this one disappointed me. With the first four, the problem seems to be too much happens too fast.

"The Asylum" was boring. There was too much run away and hide. There was also too much referencing back to Stefan and Damon's time in New Orleans. I understand some of the events made Stefan think back, but it happened so much it read like the writer had a minimum word count and was struggling to meet that.

Like so many books released recently, this one needed a good editor. There were many grammatical errors including tagging the same paragraph of dialogue twice.

The entire thing was predictable. Nothing happened that surprised me. Reading this book was a chore.