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fallen_angel1002's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
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? Yes
5.0
What happens when the life you want to lead and the life you have to lead are two different paths?
Mix has created an epic tale of love, loss and trust that follows as a young witch has to fight against her destiny whilst also fighting against a rebellion and a mutated virus. Throughout the story, protagonist Ranka has to make a lot of hard choices as the ones she loves and trusts betray her, finding a new path to follow as her magic and her heart begin to change. The tale of the Bloodwin witch is amazingly written. There are so many twists and surprises in this book that it keeps you hooked till the very end, and the characters are completely gripping as you want to see how their stories end. I had to give this the highest rating I could. Definitely worth the read, I cannot recommend this enough for people who love YA fantasy; it is one of the best books of our age.
Mix has created an epic tale of love, loss and trust that follows as a young witch has to fight against her destiny whilst also fighting against a rebellion and a mutated virus. Throughout the story, protagonist Ranka has to make a lot of hard choices as the ones she loves and trusts betray her, finding a new path to follow as her magic and her heart begin to change. The tale of the Bloodwin witch is amazingly written. There are so many twists and surprises in this book that it keeps you hooked till the very end, and the characters are completely gripping as you want to see how their stories end. I had to give this the highest rating I could. Definitely worth the read, I cannot recommend this enough for people who love YA fantasy; it is one of the best books of our age.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Minor: Child death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Trafficking, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, War, and Classism
monicajaylynn's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and War
skylarkblue1's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
So, you're probably reading the reviews because of the controversy. I didn't know about the controversy prior to reading the book, but heard about it right as I started reading so I read it with that knowledge.
The controversies:
1) The book is racist because the POC twins are ruling the country with an iron tyrannical fist killing loads of white people and oppressing them.
2) The book is antisemetic because it's got blood libel in it due to "blood-witches"
I genuenly saw neither of those throughout the book. The twins don't even rule, they're children who where scared of their white father who murdered loads of people and was really tyrannical. Here's a quote describing the father:
The controversies:
1) The book is racist because the POC twins are ruling the country with an iron tyrannical fist killing loads of white people and oppressing them.
2) The book is antisemetic because it's got blood libel in it due to "blood-witches"
I genuenly saw neither of those throughout the book. The twins don't even rule, they're children who where scared of their white father who murdered loads of people and was really tyrannical. Here's a quote describing the father:
What had Galen thought of his father in those moments? Had he watched his father's pale hands call down storms and prayed his own would never do the same?
And the answer is yes, Galen was and still is terrified of his father. He does not want to be him in any manner. His sister, Aramis, is a self-taught medical scientist who's been working incredibly hard (off-page, before the start of the book and throughout it) to save lives, make a cure to the disease and help treat blood-witches, aka literally just wanting to progress science to benefit all.
How the fuck are these 2 tyrannical rulers oppressing all the white people. Genuenly. I am genuenly asking anyone who really believes in the outrage to explain it to me because I'm so confused.
About the blood libel, I just heard people go like "oh and I just heard it's also antisemetic" but like ???? Blood witches do not use blood for magic, it's literally just "period powers". Blood witch's magic is in their blood and just flares up when their period starts. It just makes them go murdery and out of control and super strong, absolutely nothing about using blood for anything.
Again, if I'm missing something please do enlighten me.
------
Now that part is out of the way. As you can see by my star rating and the fact it's not on my reccommendations tags, this wasn't the best book I've ever read. It's got a lot of problems with it. It's incredibly predictable - like from the way the characters are introduced and the first events are set up, you can predict all the twists at the end. The characters feel incredibly scripted and their emotions feel forced. Character's arcs and progressions get reset within a couple sentences just for shock and twists and plot progression which just feels so stupid and confusing and just fustrating.
There's not many characters - some see that as a negative but so many books nowadays have insane amounts of characters and I've got an awful memory so it was quite nice for me - but you'd think that would make the emotional beats be much more impactful. But honestly, the majority of the emotional beats where kinda just lost on me as so much was told to you, the characters don't feel like they're alive and their own people. And so many of the side characters are only on the page for like, a couple chapters.
Mix's writing style was certainly something to read. Everything felt like it was written in present tense but when I was around 10% in I realised it was actually in past tense which completely threw me for the rest of the book. Additionally, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, the characters don't really talk, it's sort of written like it's in first-person but at the same time there's this authors voice dictating everything and telling us about things which feels really disconnected from the characters. Most important things happen off-page as well then it's just info-dumped to us randomly when it's needed - all the history and information about the disease, ranka's history and even connections to people, even the romance is all pretty much off-page.
The journey to the city is a good show of that. We see her set off on the journey, then we see her arrive. Apparently during the journey a lot of incredibly important things happen but we're just told them later when needed. Why not use the page space telling us used to instead just show us the journey.
The way dialogue was written as well... This is more a personal issue I have with this style of writing but it also did clash quite badly with how some of the characters were portrayed and did undermine some scenes. It tries to be this quirky funny dialogue sometimes. Sometimes characters are just super awkward and dumb and bashful when 2 seconds prior they where battle-hardened, focused on the task and super serious, sometimes a character would crack jokes to someone they hate as they're being beaten and tortured and it's just a bit weird. It feels very forced in for comedic relief and really does not feel natural in any sense of the word.
Some other random issues I have with the book is despite so much being overexplained, so much just wasn't? Like I still don't understand how Bloodwinn's are chosen, I don't understand what types of witches there really are, I still don't understand the motives of basically every antagonist, and a lot more. Additionally, why in gods name does everyone just bite each other in fights. Y'all have swords and axes and shit why does everyone just resort to biting. At the end of every fight scene is a lot of bite wounds. Synonyms also apparently don't exist, the word "pale" is used to describe every white person and I did count it, it's used 66 times total. Sometimes multiple times over a couple pages.
Pacing was another slight issue. The book covers - mostly - just over a month's worth of time but somehow within that it seems like multiple years worth of action and progression happens. Does no one sleep in this world? Do they really just literally hop from one action to another? How is it that we're still only really told about things that happen instead of seeing them if the length of time is so short but this book is so long?
I did quite like the premise - but the premise does kinda just spoil way too much. The execution was a let down in basically every single way. I did really love a medical scientist though like Aramis in such a high-fantasy book, I did quite like what little time we had when she was experimenting or healing. At the end as well, the concept of
So yeah, I don't really think this warrented all the sheer hatred and vitriol against it personally but it's certainly not a 5* read. If you want to read a book that's got a similar romance structure to this (royal siblings supposed to be in arranged marrages but actually just gay) please read Gwen and Art are Not In Love - but that book is not a high fantasy it's just an incredibly good semi-romcom with one hell of a genre twist.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Medical content, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Emotional abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Terminal illness, Grief, Death of parent, and War
linnea1801's review against another edition
dark
emotional
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? Yes
4.75
This book is sooo good!!!! It’s a story about overcoming abuse and trauma, it’s beautifully written and it’s gay so it’s a ten out of ten in my books. Also I just want to give Ranka a hug, she deserves it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Gaslighting, Abandonment, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic
oliverreeds's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
alright! lets get into the complicated mess of this book. when i first started it mmm. one day ago i had no idea abt the controversy until by chance i looked at the reviews and saw RACISM and ANTISEMITISM. i said hmm. that does not sound very good and look up what was happening but found very few examples online of anything so i turned to the comments section just to know what i was getting into. when reading abt the reverse racism i was a bit skeptical, but i saw someone explaining how, while in-world race isnt a social factor, the only bipoc characters are the same — the ruling class who are delightfully ignorant of whats happening in their city and have to be informed by an oppressed white woman. now i personally am not 100% this wasnt a misguided attempt at showing unjust government and how marginalized social groups get fucked over by the system but… why then were these two the like only bipoc characters? we couldnt have had an oppressed witch bipoc?? for some reason the answer is no.
SPOILERS BELOW
now lets get onto the antisemitism which i consider the more blatant issue. so there is a character who is reptilian in nature — hidden actually as his reptilian self — who left his reptilian homeland because they were creating biological warfare inoculations against the lower class of witches… now. wow. thats already a lot to process. and to those of you who know things abt conspiracy theories, you know that they all basically end in antisemitism including the “secret reptilians are ruling the government” shabang. so. this subplot feels like a CRAZY blatant dog whistle to these conspiracy theories. now you might be saying well HE was a good character who changed for the better, and i would say yes. hes quite well-rounded but. the implication in this book is that he betrayed ALL of his people. that he is the ONLY one who realized what they were doing was wrong. which to me,,, again makes me think hmm. that seems a little coded.
SPOILERS ENDED
now lets say this wasnt all on purpose. how should we react? well, first off we need to hold the author accountable. say hey, this is kinda fucked will you make a statement my guy? but MORE importantly we need to call out the publishing firm for a) not hiring sensitivity readers or b) not hiring very good sensitivity readers.
aside from that crazy shit this book was a good debut. the characters were compelling, the plot was interesting, but the message was insanely heavy handed which was a little frustrating.
anyway, rating zero stars for racist shit and antisemitic nonsense that could have easily been avoided
SPOILERS BELOW
now lets get onto the antisemitism which i consider the more blatant issue. so there is a character who is reptilian in nature — hidden actually as his reptilian self — who left his reptilian homeland because they were creating biological warfare inoculations against the lower class of witches… now. wow. thats already a lot to process. and to those of you who know things abt conspiracy theories, you know that they all basically end in antisemitism including the “secret reptilians are ruling the government” shabang. so. this subplot feels like a CRAZY blatant dog whistle to these conspiracy theories. now you might be saying well HE was a good character who changed for the better, and i would say yes. hes quite well-rounded but. the implication in this book is that he betrayed ALL of his people. that he is the ONLY one who realized what they were doing was wrong. which to me,,, again makes me think hmm. that seems a little coded.
SPOILERS ENDED
now lets say this wasnt all on purpose. how should we react? well, first off we need to hold the author accountable. say hey, this is kinda fucked will you make a statement my guy? but MORE importantly we need to call out the publishing firm for a) not hiring sensitivity readers or b) not hiring very good sensitivity readers.
aside from that crazy shit this book was a good debut. the characters were compelling, the plot was interesting, but the message was insanely heavy handed which was a little frustrating.
anyway, rating zero stars for racist shit and antisemitic nonsense that could have easily been avoided
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
whatsemilyreadin's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
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
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail