Reviews

Not for me; maybe I'm just not in the right state of mind for this kind of high fantasy/sci-fi setting with new jargon to wrap my brain around. Maybe I'll try it again when my brain isn't mush.

idsh's review against another edition

Go to review page

fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

stephsfeelinbookish's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Voya Thomas has a task for the trial to come into her powers and that is his sacrifice her first love in order to save the families magic. Behold a genetic matchmaking program, the market and Voya paired with Luc, Voya has to figure out what’s more important to her in order to complete this trial…

eponineeurydice's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

Apologies if this review has any typos; I am speed-writing and don't have time to edit haha!

Bro WHAT was that ending?! Huh? I- Okay. Lemme get my thoughts together here...

How do I even rate this book? How do I review it? From the very first page, I was mesmerized by the strangeness of this story, the way it artfully blended science and fantasy. It reminded me of Encanto meets Legendborn with a little splash of near-future tech. I related with the main characters, I really enjoyed the romance element (I know, shocking for me!) and it was fairly digestible; near the middle, this story snared me like a fish and refused to let go. I was straight-up TALKING to the characters at parts of this book and I think my mom may have thought I was a little crazy lol. But that's just being a reader for you! Anyway... yeah, I'm rambling a little so I don't have to talk about Voya. She was a complicated person. She struggled with making decisions, which... relateable, girl. But hers was on an extreme level that I could never hope to reach. I mean, you'd think such decisions would be easy... but no, she struggles. Which is okay! We all feel that way sometimes! But I have to admit, her indeciciveness and inability to communicate was incredibly frustrating to read about. If she'd just done some things differently, if she'd just THOUGHT about it some more, things would've gone so much simpler. But no... it had to be as complicated and gut-wrenching as possible! There's a trope in YA that I've been reading a lot lately, and it's starting to grate on me because it follows me EVERYWHERE. It's the "oh, I have this earth-shattering secret/insecurity that I'm hiding from my loved one! If I'd just tell them, they'd probably be sympathetic and we could work it out together... but nah. I'm gonna keep it from them until it gets biffer and bigger, eventually ruining both very our lives." Like at this point, sometimes when the main characters do this I almost feel like their love interests deserve better! And I know, that's super harsh, and I don't wanna spoil anything but this book does feature that trope... and I know not everyone has that emotional maturity. I'm not even sure if I have that emotional maturity! So I'll give the book this credit: it is entirely realistic. Teenagers suck sometimes, man. -Mia, a teenager

Anyway! This is a longer review than I usually write... but I'm still trying to sort my thoughts out. Because I did enjoy this! It was frustrating but in a totally bingeable way! I was like "I'm absolutely on the edge of my seat because everything is terrible right now but I know it'll figure it out!" And then... it continued to be terrible! And didn't resolve too well. Now we're edging on spoilers, my bad. I will absolutely be picking up the sequel because this book was very enthralling and had so much power over me lol, I was hooked from page one! And I hope that things turn out a little nicer in the sequel, and that she becomes better at decisions lol, but I also know that life is never that simple—and the author painted that really well. So mad respect to her.

fishy27's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I’m usually pretty good at deciding whether my being outside the target audience for the book is what affects may be affecting my experience with a text. However, with Blood Like Magic, I really can’t tell. This book is clearly a YA novel, but I found it to be exceptionally juvenile for the age bracket. I would typically conclude that the book is for the lower end of YA (read: the 12-15 y/o bracket), but some of the content in here (namely the gore/violence) makes me hesitant to do that with this book.

With that, I will say that I enjoyed Blood Like Magic, and I’ve already picked up the next book in the series. I was really excited about this concept–Black witches in futuristic Toronto making a secretive living. You can tell that Sambury loves this idea, and that passion bleeds through the pages in a really charming way; it’s easy to get wrapped up in the higher level concepts that she’s tackling here, such as family, community, and belonging. Sambury frames Voya with respect to the rest of her family in a pretty traditional way that works very well: Voya is young, no one takes her seriously, and yet she is tasked with a seemingly impossible task whose stakes are astronomically high for the the people she cares most about.

However, I found this book dangerously predictable. I knew from the moment she received her Calling that

her first love was her family, and probably Keis specifically. Her family members are, indeed, the only characters we really meet up to that point, so I don’t know why Voya instantly assumed that she needed to go fall in romantic love with some dork ass boy. It was also very frustrating that she AND her whole family assumed that destroy = kill. It felt painfully obvious that murder was not the intention, and I don’t know why none of the adults thought of that or suggested that destruction doesn’t equal killing someone.

I also was very frustrated with how she chose to handle her Calling. Why in the world did she choose to lock Keis in her house? I’m sure that her comeback will get taken care of in the next book, but why are we really out here choosing to hurt family before the boy we just met < a month ago?????

I got a bit sick of Voya being called indecisive–it shallowed her character quite a lot, in my opinion. She had more of a personality beyond that, so I won’t hold it against the book/author too much.

We had a very repetitive chant of “I must kill this boy” and “I am indecisive” that bothered me, but this may or may not have been a fault of the target audience age.

Overall, and enjoyable, quick read that will be a great story for younger readers to pick up. I loved the discussions of family and community here, and I think that it’s a really important discussion to be having in fantasy. It was so frustrating to see everyone continue to doubt Voya, but I think that’s a pretty prevalent belief among families: that young, emotional girls, especially, are not capable of anything except feeling. I am glad that we got to see Voya break that mold.

mar_w's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

read_mikey_read's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional

4.0

More...