Tuesday, March 15, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao

 




Blood Heir is the first in an young adult epic fantasy trilogy by Amélie Wen Zhao, who second book came out last year and whose conclusion is scheduled to come out later this year.  It's a story with a setup that is pretty classic at this point: an Empire in which those with magical powers over the world around them are reviled and oppressed with a princess who discovers she has such powers and finds out that her ideal country isn't quite so ideal.  It also features the classic YA trope of two protagonists of different genders and backgrounds, one of which means to betray the other at the start, who come together and possibly start feeling something for one another in the end.  

That said, while it features all of the above classical plot elements, Blood Heir works well enough to still be worth your time, with its lead characters being quite strong, and the story being very unafraid to go into some dark places.  The result is a very solid trilogy opener, with a satisfying ending that also leaves things uncertain enough to wind up going in some very interesting places.  I will be trying out the second book to see where it goes from here.  


------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------
A year ago, Ana was Anastacya Mikhailov, crown princess to the Cyrilian Empire - an Empire she thought of as ideal, even as it looked down upon people with "Affinities", magical control over a single element or power.  But even then Ana had a secret: she was a powerful Affinity herself, a Blood Affinity, and when she lost control of that power as a child, she accidentally slaughtered a number of her own people.  Still, even hiding that power at the insistence of her father, and undergoing the painful treatment for it by his agents was well worth the comfort of her father and brother's love.  

And then Ana was framed for her father's murder, forcing her to go on the run to search for the real culprit to exonerate herself.  And to do so, Ana will need to rely upon her blood affinity, the power that makes her feel like a monster, in order to have a chance at getting what she needs.  But even then...her power won't be enough on its own.  

Instead, Ana is forced to turn to a powerful con-man, Ramson Quicktongue, who might have the connections to help her track down the culprit she's looking for.  But Ramson has his own agenda, and his own angle at revenge, and in Ana he sees the weapon he finally needs to achieve that revenge.  For what Ramson knows, and Ana will soon come to learn, is that the Empire is a dark corrupt place, full of monsters who prey on affinities and others, and that Ana's monstrous power may be just the thing that the Empire and its power players really deserve.....
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Blood Heir is setup like a pretty classic YA fantasy novel at this point.  You have a male and a female protagonist, with the plot jumping between their perspectives (although it's two thirds Ana and only one third Ramson I estimate) as they experience the world through very different backgrounds.  You have a privileged character forced to view her world through a minority background when she finds herself having minority traits (in this case magic).  And of course you have a conspiracy plotline that ties the two together and results in the two growing closer together and rethinking their intents to use the other for their own purposes.  

Still, these classic setups are setups for a reason, and that is when they are executed well, they work, and that's definitely the case here.  Take Ana - who takes a while to realize that the ideal Empire she knew of wasn't real, and that it was a corrupt awful place for those who had affinities even when she was loved as the crown princess.  Her realizing that isn't a unique thing, but seeing Ana deal also with the realization of how her father's love was contingent upon her hiding her affinity, her deal with her own atrocities and feelings of being a monster, and her own feelings of failure make her a particularly strong character with some unique traits.  And the book's darkness (more on that in a bit) allows for it to go in some interesting directions that keep things fresh.  The same goes as well for Ransom who isn't just a crime boss or a snarky bastard with a heart of gold - he is that, but he's also a boy who's let his emotions go cold for years after a tragedy in his childhood, something he realizes is just like what his hated father did way back when.  It makes his own development pretty damn interesting as well, as Ransom has his own lessons to learn.  

And those lessons are taught by a world that's extremely dark, where not every character - no matter how old or precious - will survive; where slave trafficking and torturing of affinities is common place, etc.  And so the book deals not just with the questions of how to reform an oppressive empire, but also with the issues of how just standing aside and doing nothing is just as bad as being complicit in some ways.  And even the main antagonist, once revealed, is someone who you can understand in their actions, for they had every reason to feel shafted by the status quo.

Again none of this is unique to Blood Heir, but it's executed well enough that it's worth experiencing these tropes and themes again here.  And I will be going forward with book 2 shortly, to see how the book picks it up afterwards.
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