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becsa's review
3.0
Reina Torres applied for the King's Education for Youth but did so without her mom's knowledge and when she is selected she is hoping for a better future but her mom is scared.
Soon she catches the eye of King Magnus Brighton and he decides that she would be the perfect match for his son, Holden. But Reina has feelings for someone else and when she begins to uncover some of the secrets that the King has will she be able to escape?
This was an interesting book that kind of reminded me of Hunger Games crossed with a paranormal element.
Reina was an interesting character who really did not take heed of her mom's warnings and effort to keep her safe. My heart truly broke for her mom as she knew how dangerous the city was and did not want to lose Reina. Reina wanted something better for herself and her mom and believed that the city was the place to do it.
There was so much mystery involved in the city but we gradually discover something sinister going on that soon Reina finds herself involved in. It really worried me about the tracker and how she seemed to forget about it when she was getting around. I liked the friendships that Reina formed with Iris, Fiona and Helena and they were all super important within the story.
The king was super mysterious and obviously had lived a long time with the number of wives he had gone through. It was interesting that he wanted Reina to marry Holden and I think he wanted to gain more popularity and security with that move.
There were some twists and turns and the ending really leaves you wondering if Reina and Helena can succeed!
Soon she catches the eye of King Magnus Brighton and he decides that she would be the perfect match for his son, Holden. But Reina has feelings for someone else and when she begins to uncover some of the secrets that the King has will she be able to escape?
This was an interesting book that kind of reminded me of Hunger Games crossed with a paranormal element.
Reina was an interesting character who really did not take heed of her mom's warnings and effort to keep her safe. My heart truly broke for her mom as she knew how dangerous the city was and did not want to lose Reina. Reina wanted something better for herself and her mom and believed that the city was the place to do it.
There was so much mystery involved in the city but we gradually discover something sinister going on that soon Reina finds herself involved in. It really worried me about the tracker and how she seemed to forget about it when she was getting around. I liked the friendships that Reina formed with Iris, Fiona and Helena and they were all super important within the story.
The king was super mysterious and obviously had lived a long time with the number of wives he had gone through. It was interesting that he wanted Reina to marry Holden and I think he wanted to gain more popularity and security with that move.
There were some twists and turns and the ending really leaves you wondering if Reina and Helena can succeed!
crofteereader's review against another edition
3.0
**My copy was gifted to me by the author in exchange for an honest review**
The Blood King felt like holding a mirror to the current state of the US. It's an analysis of race, sexual identity, freedom of speech, privacy, and poverty. The main character is a queer brown girl - and she doesn't get to forget it for a second when she's in the capital city. These are such relevant topics to explore today.
That being said, I think I'll enjoy the second book more. The first book in a dystopian series is always a hard juggle. How to set up the world in a way that it's cruel and twisted but the main character has no real notion of the extent. How to build a character (and supporting cast) that's relatable and in a position to discover firsthand how bad her society is. And then to reveal the atrocities with ever increasing frequency until she simply must act. So unless the book is very long, the first one is usually a bit of a drag.
But the ending has set readers up for my favorite parts of the genre: rebellion and the toppling of an empire.
The writing was juvenile at times, with some repetition of phrases and strange dialogue, but the characters' actions and responses were definitely within the range of possibilities. The villain, however, felt very flat to me; he didn't have a motivation beyond power. He didn't have a story. Villains' stories are harder, certainly, but I personally find them more rewarding. I hope that in book two, King Magnus gets (not redemption) a "reason for being" and maybe a shred of that missing humanity/dimensionality.
I will give Long this: she doesn't shy away from putting her characters through the ringer to make actions believable.
The Blood King felt like holding a mirror to the current state of the US. It's an analysis of race, sexual identity, freedom of speech, privacy, and poverty. The main character is a queer brown girl - and she doesn't get to forget it for a second when she's in the capital city. These are such relevant topics to explore today.
That being said, I think I'll enjoy the second book more. The first book in a dystopian series is always a hard juggle. How to set up the world in a way that it's cruel and twisted but the main character has no real notion of the extent. How to build a character (and supporting cast) that's relatable and in a position to discover firsthand how bad her society is. And then to reveal the atrocities with ever increasing frequency until she simply must act. So unless the book is very long, the first one is usually a bit of a drag.
But the ending has set readers up for my favorite parts of the genre: rebellion and the toppling of an empire.
The writing was juvenile at times, with some repetition of phrases and strange dialogue, but the characters' actions and responses were definitely within the range of possibilities. The villain, however, felt very flat to me; he didn't have a motivation beyond power. He didn't have a story. Villains' stories are harder, certainly, but I personally find them more rewarding. I hope that in book two, King Magnus gets (not redemption) a "reason for being" and maybe a shred of that missing humanity/dimensionality.
I will give Long this: she doesn't shy away from putting her characters through the ringer to make actions believable.
kdreidsbooks's review
4.0
Liz Long painted a grim and terribly close to home picture with The Blood King. The book is a clear political statement about the current state of affairs in The United States (the king is even written as appearing to have a slightly orange skin tone at one point). In this fabled kingdom called Brighton, there is blatant class warfare, racism, mysogyny, and homphobia interlaced in every way the king rules his land, and this is all very obvious from the start. Protagonist Reina Torres comes up from the ghettos that surround the heart of the Kingdom of Brighton and enters KEY. This is King Magnus's academy that he uses to "help the underprivileged". The feel of society in The Blood King is very similar to the society that is present in books like Ready Player One or The Hunger Games. It's a struggle to survive, so education is a joke, and children are very well needed as a part of the workforce. Beyond this initial hook, the book was difficult to really sink into, so the reading moved slowly. The first half of the story was mostly predictable but certainly driven by morbid curiosity. Reina is clearly starry eyed during the beginning of her stay at KEY, painfully so. Her first love interest, Iris, developed very naturally, and the first twists in the book that I didn't see coming were with her character, and immediately after she reveals her secret, the story becomes engaging again. After Reina undergoes horrific torment by the king's hand, the plot seems to begin to allow for Reina's character to open up into quite the heroine. However, she becomes quickly re-broken, and that was disappointing to see. Then equally as quickly, she is reignited and develops a second love interest that seemed to develop less naturally, and the story is fairly action packed from that point forward. It was hard to like Reina at first because she had her head in the clouds, and the objective point of the reader is a difficult spot to be in, watching her flow blindly into a system so clearly broken. Further, she does end up becoming a strong heroine, but only after being beaten and battered, and quite frankly across the genre, more women need to come into their strength because they are strong, not because they have been broken. The story arc felt off, like the climax occuring so late into the book, so because of that and the roller coaster of interest, I am taking this book down to four stars. However, by the end of The Blood King, Reina's character and others took to growing in strides and evolved so much for the bettsr as people. The book seems a certain beginning to a marvelous second installment, so those four remaining stars are strong ones. If a reader is expecting a story arc that is classic in the way it is told, with each book of the series (in this case, a duology) having a climactic middle with rising and falling action on either side, they would be setting themselves up for disappointment. It must be kept in mind that this is only the first half. Therefore, it would logically only contain half of the action. The Blood King is a piece of literature not to be taken lightly, for how far from the truth is it, really? Not far, if you ask me, and I'm very curious to see how "King Magnus's" Regime falls - both in Brighton and The United States.
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