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jontel's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Misogyny
centrifugepolitics's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Racism, Violence, Murder, Grief, Blood, Misogyny, Death, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Colonisation and War
alexga's review against another edition
This book is extremely poorly written. It's overwritten, dialogue structure abysmal, inner monologue repetitive and full of badly offered exposition. 41% of the book and more than half of it is filler. Something happens only like 5% of the time, everything else is just description and description and description. Her every action is followed by page long report of her thought process and explanation on why she did it. Every time she feels something, there is another page long description of exactly how she feels and why she feels this way.
Imagine me telling you a story about how I get to work every day and it's this:
I wake up at 7 o'clock in the morning because that's when I need to start getting ready to go out. I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth since I want to get rid of unpleasant smell and feeling I get in my mouth every time I wake up from nightly sleep. I take a shower to wash off the sweat. I wash my hair because it has been 2 days since the last time I did it and my hair usually gets dirty by this point. I check my social media on the phone which was a gift from my older brother who I grew up with and who terrorized me my whole childhood. Unexplainable sadness strikes my heart when I think about my brother. The feeling starts as a flicked of pain and slowly spreads to my throat, my head and down my limbs. We have not talked in a long time.
I try to distract myself from thoughts about my family by making myself busy. I put on a kettle and turn on my toaster so that I can make myself a toast. While the water is getting hot and my bread being toasted, I scroll through twitter and Instagram. No notifications and I'm not surprised because I don't talk to a lot of people. Once the toast is toasted and coffee ready, I put my device aside and enjoy my breakfast. When I was a child I couldn't have a toast because we didn't have a toaster. Once I moved out from my family home toaster was the first thing I bought from my new place which I rent... You get the gist. This is not art. This is a Writing part of foreign language test where you are trying to show off your knowledge, so you include as much unnecessary information as possible.
Yes, exposition is necessary for worldbuilding and whatnot, but it should be done properly. The Blood Trials is a perfect example of how you should not do it. Except for battle scenes you will not find a single page where there is no exposition. It's in dialogue, it's in inner monologue; it's in games and trials.
The book tried to set specific tone. I guess it was going for "An Ember in the Ashes" kind of vibe but it failed miserably. Every time out FMC does anything badass it was cringe. The way she talks to her instructors is cringe. They don't owe you shit. They are your higher ups. Why are you talking to them as if you raised them?
Ikenna is a terrible protagonist. Again, author tried to make her strong, opinionated, smart and angry but she is not smart. Smart people try to get a lot of information before they draw any conclusions. She does not:
"The reasons Brock gave me for his suspicions are good enough as proof of guilt, ..." this is part of her inner monologue about Reed and wanting to kill him. She suspects Reed of murdering her grandfather. Now, what were the reasons Brock gave her that convinced her that Reed indeed murdered her grandfather? I'm glad you asked:
"He's the prime suspect. As leader of Gamma, he worked closely with Verne on a lot of initiatives, and Verne had a meeting with Reed on his calendar the day he dies. They met in the apartment two hours prior to his death. ...
This is all the information she had before she decided to kill Reed. And she deemed it good enough. This is the same person who later on judges others on how they don't value human life.
The amount of death during trials to become Praetorians makes no sense the same way it didn't make in Fourth Wing. Why are Praetorian instructors murdering people? We know that Mareen has a regular army so why in god's name would Chance murder trainees instead of just sending them away? Because the writer uses unnecessary gore and violence to set the tone of the book. Oh, right, just remembered, major trigger warning. There is very descriptive account of cooking and eating a human in chapter 8. That was so so so unnecessary. Also why did no one warn these poor aspirants that they would be taken out if they don't manage to plank for a long enough time after doing 400 burpees? Remember, most of these people are legacies. You want to tell me that these military families don't value their offsprings' lives highly enough to at least warn them that they would most likely die in training? At least in Fourth Wing this was a known fact. In The Blood Trials this is the warning our FMC Ikenna got from her grandfather's best friend:
..."After Commencement, senior Praetorians will put you through challenging trials. They will test your mettle more than your academy instructors and classes ever did."
... "The trials are designed to exert every effort to break you."
On the positive, the idea of the book sounds interesting.
Imagine me telling you a story about how I get to work every day and it's this:
I wake up at 7 o'clock in the morning because that's when I need to start getting ready to go out. I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth since I want to get rid of unpleasant smell and feeling I get in my mouth every time I wake up from nightly sleep. I take a shower to wash off the sweat. I wash my hair because it has been 2 days since the last time I did it and my hair usually gets dirty by this point. I check my social media on the phone which was a gift from my older brother who I grew up with and who terrorized me my whole childhood. Unexplainable sadness strikes my heart when I think about my brother. The feeling starts as a flicked of pain and slowly spreads to my throat, my head and down my limbs. We have not talked in a long time.
I try to distract myself from thoughts about my family by making myself busy. I put on a kettle and turn on my toaster so that I can make myself a toast. While the water is getting hot and my bread being toasted, I scroll through twitter and Instagram. No notifications and I'm not surprised because I don't talk to a lot of people. Once the toast is toasted and coffee ready, I put my device aside and enjoy my breakfast. When I was a child I couldn't have a toast because we didn't have a toaster. Once I moved out from my family home toaster was the first thing I bought from my new place which I rent... You get the gist. This is not art. This is a Writing part of foreign language test where you are trying to show off your knowledge, so you include as much unnecessary information as possible.
Yes, exposition is necessary for worldbuilding and whatnot, but it should be done properly. The Blood Trials is a perfect example of how you should not do it. Except for battle scenes you will not find a single page where there is no exposition. It's in dialogue, it's in inner monologue; it's in games and trials.
The book tried to set specific tone. I guess it was going for "An Ember in the Ashes" kind of vibe but it failed miserably. Every time out FMC does anything badass it was cringe. The way she talks to her instructors is cringe. They don't owe you shit. They are your higher ups. Why are you talking to them as if you raised them?
Ikenna is a terrible protagonist. Again, author tried to make her strong, opinionated, smart and angry but she is not smart. Smart people try to get a lot of information before they draw any conclusions. She does not:
"The reasons Brock gave me for his suspicions are good enough as proof of guilt, ..." this is part of her inner monologue about Reed and wanting to kill him. She suspects Reed of murdering her grandfather. Now, what were the reasons Brock gave her that convinced her that Reed indeed murdered her grandfather? I'm glad you asked:
"He's the prime suspect. As leader of Gamma, he worked closely with Verne on a lot of initiatives, and Verne had a meeting with Reed on his calendar the day he dies. They met in the apartment two hours prior to his death. ...
This is all the information she had before she decided to kill Reed. And she deemed it good enough. This is the same person who later on judges others on how they don't value human life.
The amount of death during trials to become Praetorians makes no sense the same way it didn't make in Fourth Wing. Why are Praetorian instructors murdering people? We know that Mareen has a regular army so why in god's name would Chance murder trainees instead of just sending them away? Because the writer uses unnecessary gore and violence to set the tone of the book. Oh, right, just remembered, major trigger warning. There is very descriptive account of cooking and eating a human in chapter 8. That was so so so unnecessary. Also why did no one warn these poor aspirants that they would be taken out if they don't manage to plank for a long enough time after doing 400 burpees? Remember, most of these people are legacies. You want to tell me that these military families don't value their offsprings' lives highly enough to at least warn them that they would most likely die in training? At least in Fourth Wing this was a known fact. In The Blood Trials this is the warning our FMC Ikenna got from her grandfather's best friend:
..."After Commencement, senior Praetorians will put you through challenging trials. They will test your mettle more than your academy instructors and classes ever did."
... "The trials are designed to exert every effort to break you."
On the positive, the idea of the book sounds interesting.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cannibalism, Violence, and Racism
Moderate: Misogyny
msrae89's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I really wanted to like this book and I was excited to read it, but, ultimately, this book just wasn’t for me.
Pros: -The book is pretty well written; it is a little repetitive at times but it makes sense within the narrative.
-The themes the book is exploring are really interesting and done in an unobtrusive way. What I mean by that is I never felt as if the book was preaching to me.
-The themes themselves were really interesting and interconnected with one another seamlessly. Racism, colonialism, military and military propaganda, sexism, classism, trauma, all work together to tell a very interesting story.
-The ending was engaging and set up the second book nicely.
However, that’s about where my enjoyment of the book ended.
Cons: The MC, Ikenna, is 19 and very traumatized, and while it makes sense for the narrative, I found it very repetitive and annoying. This might be, in part, bc I’m in my 30’s and I have an harder time relating to younger MCs. Though, really, I didn’t find any of the characters interesting or engaging. I couldn’t even “love to hate” any of them.
-The book is oddly and aggressively compulsory heterosexual and cisgender. As far as I can tell queer people just don’t exist in the book’s universe, and as a queer person I prefer to read books with queer representation. Even just a passing statement that queer people exist would be more than this book has. Maybe they are in book 2 but after starting it I doubt it based on the little I’ve read so far.
-The “romance” is just bad. First off, it’s unethical. Reed is Ikenna’s superior officer, which he acknowledges. Reed was also the mentee of Ikenna’s deceased grandfather which creates a weird situation for them. It feels a little freudian. Also, Reed is boring! And all of this awkward tension leads to a sudden sex scene. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, but this just wasn’t for me and I skipped it.
Overall it was a good idea with flat characters and dense story.
Pros: -The book is pretty well written; it is a little repetitive at times but it makes sense within the narrative.
-The themes the book is exploring are really interesting and done in an unobtrusive way. What I mean by that is I never felt as if the book was preaching to me.
-The themes themselves were really interesting and interconnected with one another seamlessly. Racism, colonialism, military and military propaganda, sexism, classism, trauma, all work together to tell a very interesting story.
-The ending was engaging and set up the second book nicely.
However, that’s about where my enjoyment of the book ended.
Cons: The MC, Ikenna, is 19 and very traumatized, and while it makes sense for the narrative, I found it very repetitive and annoying. This might be, in part, bc I’m in my 30’s and I have an harder time relating to younger MCs. Though, really, I didn’t find any of the characters interesting or engaging. I couldn’t even “love to hate” any of them.
-The book is oddly and aggressively compulsory heterosexual and cisgender. As far as I can tell queer people just don’t exist in the book’s universe, and as a queer person I prefer to read books with queer representation. Even just a passing statement that queer people exist would be more than this book has. Maybe they are in book 2 but after starting it I doubt it based on the little I’ve read so far.
-The “romance” is just bad. First off, it’s unethical. Reed is Ikenna’s superior officer, which he acknowledges. Reed was also the mentee of Ikenna’s deceased grandfather which creates a weird situation for them. It feels a little freudian. Also, Reed is boring! And all of this awkward tension leads to a sudden sex scene. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, but this just wasn’t for me and I skipped it.
Overall it was a good idea with flat characters and dense story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Murder, Racism, Toxic friendship, Xenophobia, Physical abuse, Classism, Violence, War, Blood, and Colonisation
lesliehirgelt's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Grief, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Death of parent, Sexism, Racial slurs, Violence, Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, and Racism
Moderate: Classism, Alcohol, and Cannibalism
Minor: Toxic friendship
ajalexanderreadsromance's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
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
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Torture, Racism, War, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Classism, Grief, and Misogyny
Minor: Sexism and Death
bronteysbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cannibalism, Violence, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Misogyny and Grief
kaerene's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Unhinged Review As I Just Finished The Blood Trials:
I need the sequel and I need it now. I am speechless. The plot. That ending. What an absolutely satisfying read.
This book has everything:
-Great World Building
-Creative World Building Info Dump (Seriously. I was so confused about the world in the first few chapters, I kept thinking that I was missing something and it super bothered me. BUT THEN!!! The author creates this scene with different characters answering world building questions in an almost classroom setting as part of the trials and I was amazed. It was so clever since the story/plot was already going in full force.)
-A Badass Female Main Character who kicks a lot of butt
-A+ Characters
-A+ Plot
-A Zuko/Avatar The Last Airbender-esque Redemption ark?! CHEFS KISS.
-So So Many Deaths
-Mystery
-Mayhem
-And takes a good long look at questioning authority, perpetuating and being complicit in racism and bigotry.
Highly highly recommend this to anyone who wants a fast paced story that does an amazing job at blending elements of sci-fi and fantasy together into something new. Definitely check trigger warnings as there are a lot unsettling things that happen around and to our FMC, Ikenna.
I need the sequel and I need it now. I am speechless. The plot. That ending. What an absolutely satisfying read.
This book has everything:
-Great World Building
-Creative World Building Info Dump (Seriously. I was so confused about the world in the first few chapters, I kept thinking that I was missing something and it super bothered me. BUT THEN!!! The author creates this scene with different characters answering world building questions in an almost classroom setting as part of the trials and I was amazed. It was so clever since the story/plot was already going in full force.)
-A Badass Female Main Character who kicks a lot of butt
-A+ Characters
-A+ Plot
-A Zuko/Avatar The Last Airbender-esque Redemption ark?! CHEFS KISS.
-So So Many Deaths
-Mystery
-Mayhem
-And takes a good long look at questioning authority, perpetuating and being complicit in racism and bigotry.
Highly highly recommend this to anyone who wants a fast paced story that does an amazing job at blending elements of sci-fi and fantasy together into something new. Definitely check trigger warnings as there are a lot unsettling things that happen around and to our FMC, Ikenna.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Racism, Murder, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Torture, Gore, Violence, Racial slurs, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Blood, and Sexism
sahramahtab's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
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? Yes
5.0
I’m simply speechless. This was a stunningly written book that is a guaranteed emotional roller coaster. The way it dealt with racism, misogynoir, sexism and their intersection with certain privileges was perfectly executed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Cannibalism, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Torture, Violence, War, and Xenophobia
booksandcurlz's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I seriously loved this book and feel like it deserves more praise and more eyeballs.
What I ❤️
What I ❤️
♥️ Ikenna - she was intelligent, cunning, but also have issue with restraint and always let the anger get the best of her.
♥️ Reed - he was loyal, fair, with a high EQ, willing to admit he was wrong and always knew when to apologize for it.
♥️ The trials - 😮💨 The trials were BRUTAL, and what Ikenna went through WOW
♥️ The political maneuvering - how the Tribunals conspired, the incident at the Khanai kingdom, what happened in the trials (what really happened)
♥️ All the action, there was a great amount of action and that kept my attention.
♥️ All the action, there was a great amount of action and that kept my attention.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Xenophobia, Alcohol, Blood, Bullying, Classism, Misogyny, Violence, Grief, and Racism
Moderate: War
Minor: Injury/Injury detail