Rating: 8/10
Synopsis:
Standing on opposite sides of a looming civil war, two siblings discover that not even ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.
Four hundred years ago, a cataclysmic war cracked the world open and exterminated the Elder races. Amid the ashes, their human inheritor, the Dawn Republic, stands guard over lands littered with eldritch relics and cursed by plaguespawn outbreaks. But a new conflict is looming and brother and sister Maya and Gyre have found themselves on opposite sides.
At the age of five, Maya was taken by the Twilight Order and trained to be a centarch, wielding forbidden arcana to enforce the Dawn Republic’s rule. On that day, her brother, Gyre, swore to destroy the Order that stole his sister… whatever the cost.
Twelve years later, brother and sister are two very different people: she is Burningblade, the Twilight Order’s brightest prodigy; he is Silvereye, thief, bandit, revolutionary.
Review:
Blood of the Chosen is a solid sequel to the first book and impresses itself upon the reader in spades of rip-roaring action, infallible characters and humour that fits perfectly with the theme this book is going for. It is a triage of politics, bickering, chosen, corrupted, arcana, and much more. If anything the characters of Gyre and Maya drive the story often forward, at the expense of sacrificing some parts of the worldbuilding which is in my opinion, a good thing. The prose is good in many areas, but sometimes I felt the pacing was a bit slow. Some scenes could have been shortened to quicken up the pacing around some parts of the novel.
In a nutshell, without spoiling too much, one sibling fights to destroy the Twilight Order, and the other fights to preserve it. Add in a bunch of rebels, add in people trying to form their own splinter Kingdom, add in Barons and rebels such as the Greens, the Whites that can’t agree with each other on anything. I have to say that the action scenes are really well written in this book that resembles something out of a Hollywood movie if they made fantasy dungeons and dragon movies. That being said, sometimes I did feel there were some emphasis on characters’ gestures more than their feelings in some regards. As an example, I often felt Gyre was handled unfairly by the women in his life. He needs a real woman that’ll love him and bring him solace to his broken heart. He has the makings of a very potential leader.
This story has a ton of drama, a ton of political conflicts that would be too hard to summarise in one go. All I know is that you have to read the first book in order to understand the events of the second. It is, a very well written book, and many characters such as Maya and Beq get more scene time which allows us to explore their relationship well enough. This added a lot of character to the story and I liked Elariel’s descent into humanity. This is a sequel that triumphs on all fronts. It’s a solid 8/10 from me on this one. I cannot wait to read book 3 and thank you to the Head of Zeus for providing me with a copy. I can’t wait to read book 3!
Al-Alhambra Book Reviews 