Reviews with content warning for Blood - The Shadow of what was Lost

A very good story, it was very interesting to see how everything flowed and connected to the end. One of the things I didn’t like about it though is that all the action scenes are done way too fast. It makes it a bit boring when you’re amping to see the magic system I’m action but the fighting is over within a page and half. It also does a good job of making want to commit to the rest of the series to simply find out what the heck is going on.

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sami_not_sammi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

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martinq's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.5

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bebby92's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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donatio's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-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? No

3.75

I did love the heavy world-building, that there was not as much romance as in many other books and I agree with all the people who say that the females were better-crafted than the male ones.
Yet this book felt quite slow to me and as if nothing much happens. The time skips seemed to skip over important parts and it all seems quite "easy" as in the prota could always find a solution right away and there were many points when they could just TELL that someone was trustworthy, too often in my opinion. Furthermore I have not been able to really bond with the characters, their grief for example did not affect me.
You can tell that it is a debut and not up there with Samantha Shannon or V. E. Schwab but I am intrigued enough to read the next books.

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lectora21's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious 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? No

3.75

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shadereads's review

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I can't quite put a finger on what bugged me about this book, probably because there were multiple things that all added up to me not wanting to continue. For one, the book is massive, but the catalyst happened in the first 50 pages. That feels too quick. I would have liked a little more time getting to know the 'before' life before such drastic changes happened in their lives, and just get to know the characters in general and how the magic system worked.
For two, I didn't enjoy how the main female lead was being treated. She had her life basically taken away from her before she had a chance, and has seen nothing but trauma and death since the story started. There was a whole chapter that could have been taken out involving her, because it feels like it gave too much away too quickly, leaving little intrigue to get invested in, because we already know who is shady and who we shouldn't trust.
Overall, if this was trying to be like The Wheel of Time or Brandon Sanderson, I don't think it hit that mark for me. It's probably one of those books that's long for the sake of being long.

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sinamile's review against another edition

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adventurous funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A

5.0

1. I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!

2. You know how sometimes you get annoyed when a character is made too special? Yeah, I want Davian to be that special. No, not conveniently special, like everything just works out for him, but I want him to have all the powers. I want him to be that charcter.

3. Truth be told, I didn't know what was happening most of the time, but I sure as hell had a good time and will definitely be reading the next book!

<blockquote>“... That’s the natural arrogance of man, sadly. We want to believe that free will means complete independence from the plans of our creator.”</blockquote>

CW/TW: bigotry, slurs, bullying, graphic description of gore, graphic description of violence, blood, death, knives/knife violence, beheading, war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, ableist slurs, bounty hunting, murder, swords/sword violence, stabbing, suicide ideation, physical abuse, PTSD, anxiety, vomiting, graphic body mutilation, child death, graphic description of wounds, mention of rape/sexual assault, graphic description of torture, castration, disfiguring, self-harm, invasion, mass murder

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