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A review by sleepydoe
Rea and the Blood of the Nectar by Payal Doshi
3.0
Rea and The Blood of the Nectar is a middle-grade fantasy series that’s set in a tiny village off of the city of Darjeeling, and it follows the story of twins Rea and Rohan on their twelfth birthday as their innocent little rebellion of a rendezvous out into the village for a midnight celebration with their friends, against their mother’s wishes, brings them so much more than they bargained for.
Off the bat, let me tell you, it’s just so very heartwarming to just look at this book. The cover in and of itself fills me with all kinds of happy, fluffy feelings. I know it shouldn’t really be as big a deal as it is to me, but seeing a little brown girl on that cover always gives me such a serotonin boost that this book gets points for just existing in that form.
Now, onto the meat of the story! The plot takes off when, the morning of their twelfth birthday, Rea wakes up to find her brother Rohan missing, and her mother and grandmother despairing over it. She feels an immense amount of guilt over this happening, because she leaves him behind the night before, and her family sort of gives up on finding him ever, which angers her. All this spurs her into action, and with the help of her friend Leela, Rea vows to find her brother and bring him back home. What she doesn’t anticipate is this investigation of hers taking her across the border between realms into the strange and wonderful world of Astranthia, a world that she comes to learn is as much a part of her as Darjeeling is, only she was never told of it.
As a middle-grade portal fantasy, this story has a pretty standard plot structure. There’s the over-the-top, almost ridiculous fantasy world that Rea is thrown into, and she is somehow a very important part of its history and its future - she’s The Chosen One, of course-, and there’s the quest she must go on with the help of her trusty sidekicks. It’s also kind of Alice in Wonderland-y, in a way, what with there being an evil, power hungry queen, and Rea, who must beat her at her own game to get her brother back. These things aren’t essentially bad, per se, but I do feel that they lent the story a certain predictability, and took away from the mystery element of it all. It was still a fun little adventure, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like it would’ve been great if we saw things being shaken up a little bit more.
One of the things that irked me the most, however, was the world-building when it came to the land of Astranthia. It was all pretty inconsistent, and mostly felt like a jumbled up version of amusing and fantastical elements that can exist in a world just shoved together. I feel like that really made the story easy to fall out of often, especially since the girls’ fascination with Astranthia is a huge part of their journey to find Rohan. I think this kind of world can work with a story with as high stakes as this one, as long as you’re able to work around exposing parts of it a certain way, and this was not it. (Also, a lot of the parts of this fantasy world felt very anglicized to me. I mean, this is definitely a very subjective opinion, but it was a little too
Barbie: Fairytopia - which, there is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t really see how a world like that adds to the story the author is trying to tell here in any way. And how Darjeeling being the previous backdrop brings anything to the plate. Like it’s just this very disjointed element that took me out of the book a lot is what I’m trying to say here).
Actually, the writing itself was definitely something that bothered me throughout. There’s definitely a lot of interesting things in this story, but the style of writing just did not gel with all those ideas, in my opinion. There were parts when the writing felt very stilted, and there was also a whole lot of telling and not showing. The pacing was also a little all over the place which made all the character development and growing dynamics between all the different characters feel very disingenuous and forced. There was definitely a solid beginning, middle and end to each character’s journey in the story, and it really had the potential to work out really well, but I felt like it was lacking severely in execution.
The ending of the book was also very confusing. Well, the beginning of the third act, too, to be honest. There’s a lot of political stuff that’s supposed to be going on, and there’s scenes which are supposed to be “battle scenes”, but it was all kind of confusing, and more often than not, felt like something that came out of the blue. There’s just too many plotlines happening all the time, but the focus is always on Rea, and nothing else gets enough of a significant mention even when it involves one of the other important sidekicks, so it feels like it’s a plot thread that’s spawning into existence spontaneously in the middle of some random scene.
Also, the magnitude of these scenes is also always unclear, I feel. For instance, the first “battle” that’s a protest gone violent just read like a minor scuffle to me, but then in the aftermath you have all these hundreds of people injured and dead, and an entire army retreating and it was all a little AAAAH-inducing, you know? (Also the whole thing about this country is they don’t want to “disrupt tradition” as their current Queen is doing and I really don’t want to touch that moral with a ten foot pole like GIRL WHAT).
As much as I am complaining about this book, I do think it’s still a relatively fun read? Like it’s a middle-grade fantasy!! It’s obviously fun!! The characters are, despite their sometimes insanely out of pocket behaviour and mood changes, really cute. The friendships are fun to read about! And the complicated relationship the Rea has with her family is also pretty well done, and struck a chord with me. The parts with Queen Razya were really fun to read, and there’s a lot of backstory there that we didn’t get to see, and I definitely want to know about more!
Also the magic system is super cool! I liked that despite being a middle-grade, the author did not shy away from the slight body horror of blood magic. There were also these really cute paris that were so freaking adorable, I could NOT deal. There’s also all these fantastical creatures spread out, and there’s parts of this story that WORK, and work really well!! It’s just that these are all, at the end of the day, still parts, and they don’t all fit well perfectly, which is something that makes this book feel a little off.
More than anything, I do see the value in having a story featuring little girls from a tiny village in Darjeeling be the main characters in an epic fantasy story, but at the same time, I do feel disappointed, overall, because there was really so much potential, but it felt like a bunch of great, fun ideas held together with sellotape and the power of my will to like this book. So, like, yeah, I do think this book can be a fun read! But I also think it’s definitely not for everyone, and it has a lot of kinks that need working out!
Off the bat, let me tell you, it’s just so very heartwarming to just look at this book. The cover in and of itself fills me with all kinds of happy, fluffy feelings. I know it shouldn’t really be as big a deal as it is to me, but seeing a little brown girl on that cover always gives me such a serotonin boost that this book gets points for just existing in that form.
Now, onto the meat of the story! The plot takes off when, the morning of their twelfth birthday, Rea wakes up to find her brother Rohan missing, and her mother and grandmother despairing over it. She feels an immense amount of guilt over this happening, because she leaves him behind the night before, and her family sort of gives up on finding him ever, which angers her. All this spurs her into action, and with the help of her friend Leela, Rea vows to find her brother and bring him back home. What she doesn’t anticipate is this investigation of hers taking her across the border between realms into the strange and wonderful world of Astranthia, a world that she comes to learn is as much a part of her as Darjeeling is, only she was never told of it.
As a middle-grade portal fantasy, this story has a pretty standard plot structure. There’s the over-the-top, almost ridiculous fantasy world that Rea is thrown into, and she is somehow a very important part of its history and its future - she’s The Chosen One, of course-, and there’s the quest she must go on with the help of her trusty sidekicks. It’s also kind of Alice in Wonderland-y, in a way, what with there being an evil, power hungry queen, and Rea, who must beat her at her own game to get her brother back. These things aren’t essentially bad, per se, but I do feel that they lent the story a certain predictability, and took away from the mystery element of it all. It was still a fun little adventure, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like it would’ve been great if we saw things being shaken up a little bit more.
One of the things that irked me the most, however, was the world-building when it came to the land of Astranthia. It was all pretty inconsistent, and mostly felt like a jumbled up version of amusing and fantastical elements that can exist in a world just shoved together. I feel like that really made the story easy to fall out of often, especially since the girls’ fascination with Astranthia is a huge part of their journey to find Rohan. I think this kind of world can work with a story with as high stakes as this one, as long as you’re able to work around exposing parts of it a certain way, and this was not it. (Also, a lot of the parts of this fantasy world felt very anglicized to me. I mean, this is definitely a very subjective opinion, but it was a little too
Barbie: Fairytopia - which, there is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t really see how a world like that adds to the story the author is trying to tell here in any way. And how Darjeeling being the previous backdrop brings anything to the plate. Like it’s just this very disjointed element that took me out of the book a lot is what I’m trying to say here).
Actually, the writing itself was definitely something that bothered me throughout. There’s definitely a lot of interesting things in this story, but the style of writing just did not gel with all those ideas, in my opinion. There were parts when the writing felt very stilted, and there was also a whole lot of telling and not showing. The pacing was also a little all over the place which made all the character development and growing dynamics between all the different characters feel very disingenuous and forced. There was definitely a solid beginning, middle and end to each character’s journey in the story, and it really had the potential to work out really well, but I felt like it was lacking severely in execution.
The ending of the book was also very confusing. Well, the beginning of the third act, too, to be honest. There’s a lot of political stuff that’s supposed to be going on, and there’s scenes which are supposed to be “battle scenes”, but it was all kind of confusing, and more often than not, felt like something that came out of the blue. There’s just too many plotlines happening all the time, but the focus is always on Rea, and nothing else gets enough of a significant mention even when it involves one of the other important sidekicks, so it feels like it’s a plot thread that’s spawning into existence spontaneously in the middle of some random scene.
Also, the magnitude of these scenes is also always unclear, I feel. For instance, the first “battle” that’s a protest gone violent just read like a minor scuffle to me, but then in the aftermath you have all these hundreds of people injured and dead, and an entire army retreating and it was all a little AAAAH-inducing, you know? (Also the whole thing about this country is they don’t want to “disrupt tradition” as their current Queen is doing and I really don’t want to touch that moral with a ten foot pole like GIRL WHAT).
As much as I am complaining about this book, I do think it’s still a relatively fun read? Like it’s a middle-grade fantasy!! It’s obviously fun!! The characters are, despite their sometimes insanely out of pocket behaviour and mood changes, really cute. The friendships are fun to read about! And the complicated relationship the Rea has with her family is also pretty well done, and struck a chord with me. The parts with Queen Razya were really fun to read, and there’s a lot of backstory there that we didn’t get to see, and I definitely want to know about more!
Also the magic system is super cool! I liked that despite being a middle-grade, the author did not shy away from the slight body horror of blood magic. There were also these really cute paris that were so freaking adorable, I could NOT deal. There’s also all these fantastical creatures spread out, and there’s parts of this story that WORK, and work really well!! It’s just that these are all, at the end of the day, still parts, and they don’t all fit well perfectly, which is something that makes this book feel a little off.
More than anything, I do see the value in having a story featuring little girls from a tiny village in Darjeeling be the main characters in an epic fantasy story, but at the same time, I do feel disappointed, overall, because there was really so much potential, but it felt like a bunch of great, fun ideas held together with sellotape and the power of my will to like this book. So, like, yeah, I do think this book can be a fun read! But I also think it’s definitely not for everyone, and it has a lot of kinks that need working out!