Recommended for readers who love fantasy, unique magic systems, and detailed worlds inspired by Russia.
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Affinites, those with abilities to control the world around them, are considered unnatural in the Cyrilian Empire. This is the world Ana has grown up in. As part of the ruling class, she wants for nothing. Living behind palace walls should mean that she’s protected and in control, but Ana has a secret: she’s an Affinite with the deadly ability to control blood. She’s been forced to hide her curse for years, but when her father is murdered and the sole blame falls on Ana, she has no choice but to embrace her Affinity in order to find her father’s murderer.
Fleeing the palace to save her life, Ana has no choice but to team up with Ramson Quicktongue, a crime lord she cannot trust. As she continues to track the murderer across the Cyrilia, she discovers that the world she thought she knew is not the reality. Corruption controls the land and threatens the world she thought she knew. Only with Ramson will she get to the center of the corruption, but Ramson has plans of his own.
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Blood Heir was one of my most anticipated reads of 2019. Even before the controversy and subsequent intrigue, I’d wanted to check out this Russian inspired fantasy. The world is very vast. Almost too vast, if I’m being honest. I know that I’m often saying something along the lines of “I love the world-building because it’s so dense” on this blog, but this one didn’t quite hit that mark for me. There’s a lot going on in this world but the details didn’t quite stick. Names and places were being thrown around and were not really detailed enough for me to get a good picture of what the world as a whole looked like. I feel like the immediate world that Ana is surrounded by was very detailed. It helped cement the reader in this world that was huge.
I want to say that I ultimately really enjoyed this book. I loved the darkness in Ana and in her powers. I loved the banter between her and Ramson, who was an interesting character on his own. However, I did struggle to read this book. The first half of the book was incredibly difficult to get through because I felt like so little was happening. It was basically Ana and Ramson taking a journey through the Russian wilderness in order to get from point A to point vengeance. And it was very boring. Why was it boring? It’s a book about a disgraced princess who can control the blood in people’s veins and a crime lord who team up together, but somehow nothing really happened until 200 something pages into the book? I was really disappointed by that. Of course, there are things that happen, but it was clear that those first 200 or so pages are meant to build up to the eventual middle of the novel where there’s a climatic event that spurs the book on to the end.
Despite the pacing issues, I did really enjoy being in the heads of Ana and Ramson, even though they were frustratingly naive at times. I wanted to throttle Ana more than a few times as her naivety nearly cost her and her allies. I did love that as the book went on she became more confident in her powers and her choices regarding them. When the book started Ana was very singleminded as she set her sights on discovering her father’s murderer. As the book continued she began to care about more and it allowed her to grow as a character. She began to think about what would come next after she apprehended her father’s murderer. I also appreciated that Ramson also had an arc that I was able to better understand because we got a look into his head.
Blood Heir was a good read but I can’t help but feel it was a bit overhyped for me. The book was massive and I honestly didn’t feel like it needed to be. And knowing that this is a projected trilogy is honestly kind of daunting if the other two books are going to have all of the action crammed at the end. I’m really interested in seeing what the next book brings, but I hope it will be more streamlined than the first.
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Have you read this one? What did you think of it?
[a cup of tea and an armful of books] 