Reviews with content warning for Violence - Bloodmarked

I DIDN’T REALISE THIS WASN’T A DUOLOGY. I can’t believe I have to wait a year for the next one. This was even better than the first book, I don’t want to leave this world yet.

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macykey's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny medium-paced

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

4.25

There were times that this book was a little slow for me. But it was so engrossing, I couldn’t put it down!! I’m also a big fan of Sel. Maybe not necessarily as a romantic interest for Bree, but I do love him. His potential romance with Bree does seem a little forced to me.

I keep thinking that his attraction to her came out of essentially nowhere. I mean, he spent the majority of the first book wanting to kill her. Yes, he’s spent a lot of time with her since Nicholas was kidnapped, but even still. Then I thought his bond with Nick. If Nick can feel Sel’s rage and Sel can feel Nick’s, then why wouldn’t Sel be able to feel Nick’s love? He feels Nick’s love for Bree and that’s why he’s so attracted to her. I hate this because it means that Sel’s feelings are false while Bree’s are real, but I think it makes the most sense.

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hey_al's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense 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? No

4.5

Just as good as the first. I cannot WAIT for the next one!!

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dlrosebyh's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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

5.0

Bree's only goal was to learn the truth about her mother's death. She joined the Legendborn Order, a covert organization descended from King Arthur's knights, only to learn that she possessed ancestoral might. Bree has changed into a new person now.

However, the Order's long-running conflict with demons is reaching a lethal apex. And Nick, the Legendborn boy who captured Bree's heart, has been taken hostage. The Regents, who control the Order, forbid Bree from fighting. As the living anchor for the magic that maintains the Legendborn cycle, she is a mysterious girl with unheard-of power who needs to be protected.

Bree and her friends are forced to flee in order to save Nick as the Regents make it clear they will stop at nothing to conceal the conflict. However, there are adversaries everywhere, Bree's own abilities are unpredictable and lethal, and she is powerless to stop her developing attraction to Selwyn, the wizard sworn to defend Nick to the last end. Bree must learn to harness her powers from the ancestors who used them first—without losing herself in the process—if she is to have any chance of protecting herself and the people she loves.

I anticipated that this book would be one of my favorites, but I did not anticipate that it would top my list of favorites for the year 2023. It's just the way my YA fantasy should be. When Sel eventually confessed to Bree, I was shouting, which is unusual for me because I detest love triangles. Given that we didn't get to see much of Nick in this book and since the tension was so palpable throughout, I'm now rooting for Sel and Bree. I like having enemies to lovers from time to time.

I practically held my breath the entire nearly 600 pages of this book because I couldn't put it down. I don't know if it's because I finished this book at four in the morning, but the conclusion was so unexpected. And the fact that it has a cliffhanger? So you're telling me the release of the next book won't be until 2024? I'm about to do some nefarious things.

I understand that many people didn't enjoy how action-packed it was, but I did. Because a different problem will surface in every single chapter, it was almost criminal to put the book down. You need Alice to take a break, else you can't. She's such a comic relief character, which is why I adore her.

All of the relationships in this book—romantic, friendshipal, family, etc.—were so excellent and well-developed that they increased my love for the characters. Despite the fact that Nick was barely mentioned in this book, it did a wonderful job at winning me over because I wasn't really fond of him in the first. As Sel previously stated, I believed him to be some white supremacist bullshit (and a nepotism baby).

I also felt the book had a fantastic plot; it was really action-packed (I know some people didn't like it much, but I did), and while it was a little bit repetitive at times, I thought it was handled very well since, in my opinion, the repetition made the story more vivid. This kind of repetition provided more details about Bree's character, which I appreciated. It's not your standard repetition where it seems like the author was pressing ctrl c + ctrl v on their computer.

But in addition to the story and the people, I really adored how the universe essentially grew. Since we were just learning the fundamentals of being a Legendborn in the first book, it was kind of just a 20% zoom out. However, in this one, because it was action-packed, characters were fleeing from one location to another, which caused the world to expand.

Obviously from the cliffhangers, I do have some occurring questions. Hopefully, they can be answered in the next book of the series.

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

---Contains spoilers for the first book---

BLOODMARKED is about grief and reconciliation, building some thing new out of the ashes of what was. It's a tale of power and legacy, how people choose whether to continue in the paths that are handed to them or to try and make something better and new. It’s also a story of intimacy and trust, particularly between Bree and her loved ones.

One of my favorite worldbuilding aspects is the way Bree gets an opportunity to delve more into Rootcraft as a community practice, expressed in a particular way through her, but also continuing to emphasize that she's not alone. LEGENDBORN is in many ways about her entering an almost entirely white space and figuring out how to exist under their rules, while in BLOODMARKED she is gradually figuring out where she fits into a larger Black community of Rootcrafters. The Legendborn Council members seek to confine and control her, seeing her blackness as an impediment or something they have to deal with in pursuit of their own aims. For most of the book she’s on the run, constantly on the news with her friends and hours, never quite feeling safe and desperately needing somewhere to land. She's trying to stay ahead of the racist institution which wants to use her while pretending that they and their ancestors didn't do anything wrong.

Alice really gets to shine, or at least have much more of a role now that she knows what’s going on with Bree and can be part of the main action. I’m also very happy with how much William is around. I love books with a beleaguered medic who knows that almost none of his instructions will be followed by the heroes who keep getting injured and only barely making it out alive. I particularly love the arc of Bree’s dynamic with Sel. Their relationship has always been complicated, but by having Nick be elsewhere for most of the book there is room for the two of them to work out a lot of stuff even while his presence is still felt.

As a sequel, BLOODMARKED directly addresses the revelation from LEGENDBORN that Bree is a scion of Arthur. There’s a mostly new storyline related to machinations by the council, trying to exploit Bree while simultaneously ignoring or at least downplaying the implications of her existence. I’m not sure whether anything is fully introduced and resolved, but the way that most of the book takes place away from campus means that this has an entirely different (though complementary) feeling from LEGENDBORN. There are frank discussions of the fact that many of Bree's ancestors were enslaved, that a particular one of them was raped by a descendent of Arthur, leading to his power in Bree's veins. As a series, The Legendborn Cycle is about how racism in the past has impacts on the present, how the path to get here matters for what we do in the present. When people and institutions continue to benefit from racism in the past, they have incentives in the present to perpetuate inequalities, as well as to be overtly racist when their power allows them to get away with it. Bree's very existence forces the Legendborn to deal with their racist past, and then some of them choose to deal with it by helping her, breaking that cycle, while others do everything in their power to bury her and pretend that nothing bad ever happened.

This isn’t the last book in the series, and there’s a development towards the end which specifically sets up a new paradigm in the next book. Except for a very short section towards the end, Bree is the narrator and her voice is consistent with her style in LEGENDBORN. The story is self contained enough that it would mostly make sense, even if someone hasn’t read the first book. It does a pretty good job of explaining backstory as it becomes relevant and generally avoid potentially confusing infodumps while getting the reader up to speed.

The ending is excellent! The final section upsets the status quo in a variety of ways, some of which are terrible for various characters and their plans, but all of which were narratively interesting and unexpected to me. I definitely didn’t expect some of the decisions made right at the end, and I look forward to how those will be handled in the next book.

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_p0ssum_'s review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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

5.0

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becann's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.25

A roller coaster ride of a book. Incredible, heart wrenching, almost frustrating. Really enjoyed overall, but had to be in the right headspace to read.

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