Scan barcode
A review by alexga
The Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport
Did not finish book. Stopped at 41%.
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