Reviews tagging 'Death'

Forged by Blood by Ehigbor Okosun

13 reviews

abby_can_read's review against another edition

adventurous emotional 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

4.0

📖
I had a good time with this book. I liked the magic system. I loved the worldbuilding and the lore. I adored Demi -- I thought she was strong and despite her struggles, it is easy to see she's still learning and growing as a person with impulsive and reckless actions.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Violence, and Death of parent

Moderate: Death, Slavery, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, and Pregnancy

bookish_hollyx's review against another edition

adventurous sad medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Racism, Violence, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual assault

pernrider's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring tense fast-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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Racism, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Trafficking, Grief, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Death, Physical abuse, Slavery, Torture, Police brutality, Trafficking, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Child death, Sexual assault, and Pregnancy

thereadingmarshmallow's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Trafficking, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

metaphorsandmisc's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Racism, Torture, and Classism

Moderate: Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Minor: Rape

e_briar's review

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent

Moderate: Slavery and Classism

Minor: Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Physical abuse, Trafficking, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

rhi_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark tense 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? Yes

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Racism, Violence, Death of parent, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Racial slurs and Slavery

Minor: Confinement, Rape, and Sexual violence

roseleebooks's review against another edition

adventurous tense fast-paced

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

3.5

This book introduces us to a world on the verge of war, seen through the eyes of Dèmi, a young Oluso (magic user). The Oluso are in hiding, magic is forbidden in their world, and Dèmi is hiding secrets that would get her killed by the rulers of the kingdom.

I loved how strong a person Dèmi is in this story. She is powerful and holds to her identity and ideals. A really wonderful MC to follow and I'm looking forward to seeing how she grows in the next book.

The pace of this book is very fast, and I found myself wishing for some more internal dialogue or reflection to help me frame the information. There is one particular chapter in which there are several reveals about multiple characters and I had to reread it and review a previous chapter to understand what was going on. There was a little more explanation/review of that information later in the book which I appreciated, but it would have been helpful closer to the events as well. I also felt the relationship/love interest subplot could have been developed more, but suspect this will be explored in the next book.

We see Dèmi receive some warnings about the love interest so this may contribute to the plot going forward.

Although there were some things I thought could have been developed more, the world building, main character, and setup for the next book were all well done and I'll be looking forward to reading the rest of the story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Rape

honeycupreads's review against another edition

adventurous emotional tense fast-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? Yes

3.5

The world we get to explore in Forged by Blood is very beautiful. I really enjoyed the world building and the magic system was so interesting to me. I feel like the first half of this book was pretty good, however with the second half of the book we started to receive a bunch of twists all at once. Everytime we were hit with a new shocking piece of information we would get 3 more twists within the next couple of pages and I feel like we never got time to sit with it and really see how Dèmi processes everything. The romance in this book was poorly done in my opinion. The “love triangle”  was very odd to me because I felt as though Dèmi didn’t have any chemistry with either of them. There was some fun banter that came from it but overall neither relationship was very convincing. There’s also a lot of things that I felt could be expanded on a bit more and hopefully we will see some of that in the sequel. All in all I did enjoy this book and will be tuned in when the sequel gets released! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death of parent, and Colonisation

Moderate: Confinement, Death, and Slavery

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, and Pregnancy

bettysbookishworld's review against another edition

adventurous emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I would like to thank the publisher, HarperVoyager UK, for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Forged by Blood is a fantasy debut novel isnpired by Nigerian mythology. The mythology is what intrigued me about reading it and it delivered on this front. I enjoyed all the folklore and how it got effortlessly woven into the magic system and the worldbuilding. The story even takes part in a Spirit Realm, which was my favourite part of the book and the most interesting one, too. If this is the reason why you got interested in the book, too, the author does a great job with that and definitely try reading it.

However, I could tell this is a debut novel. The story was missing some sort of nuance. I feel like everything was happening at once without any room for a reader to actually get connected to the story and characters. Events were rushed, plot points got resolved too quickly and characters didn't have much time to actually develop further. It's also supposed to be an adult fantasy, however, the characters and their reactions felt very juvenile. There was also a romance aspect to the book, which consisted of tropes I don't enjoy. I think the love "triangle" was unnecessary when having fated mates/souls, because of its predictability. 

I really wanted to enjoy this story, but it just didn't work for me at all. On more positive note, I definitely want to read more fantasy inspired by African mythology and folklore, as I loved it in this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, and Colonisation

Moderate: Suicide and War

Minor: Rape and Pregnancy