Wednesday, March 9, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 5, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.    


The Blood Trials is the debut novel of author N.E. Davenport, and the first half of a new YA SciFi/Fantasy Duology.  The story features a young woman, Ikenna, who is the granddaughter of a famous soldier who saved his Republic from the armies of a powerful conquering Empire...even despite that Republic's racist prejudice against his mixed blood heritage....and who suddenly and mysteriously died three months prior to the story's beginning.  And of course when Ikenna gets the word that he might have been murdered, she enlists herself in the dangerous trials that determine who becomes the Republic's elite soldiers in order to discover who killed him and to get her revenge.  

It's a pretty classic setup, but Davenport tells it in ways that are both brutal and often surprising in how it shows the brash Ikenna trying to get her revenge amongst horrifying odds and tremendous racial prejudice, with a setting that features honestly too many interesting parts for the book to really get into.  As a protagonist Ikenna is highly enjoyable in her impulsive good hearted but unabashedly brutal at times behavior and is easy to care for, and several other major characters are really well done side characters.  Still, the final act of the book introduces a part of this world only hinted at previously, such that it feels really really rushed, as the book rushes towards a cliffhanger ending to end before book 2.  But there's enough compelling and different here to keep me interested to try out the sequel.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
Three months ago, Ikenna's grandfather, the legendary Legatus Verne Amari, died.  Verne was a legend, hated by the racially prejudiced orthodoxy of the Republic of Mareen for his half-Khanaian but beloved for saving Mareen from the armies of the Blood Emperor.  And to Ikenna, he was her steadying force - the man who raised her, who trained her, and who was the only one who knew her secret: that she possess the same Blood Gift as the Blood Emperor's legions, a power that every person in the Republic fears and hates.  

And so Verne's death causes Ikenna to fall into a drunken spiral until one of the Republic's leaders, one the only one her grandfather trusts, hints that her grandfather was assassinated by a Praetorian Guard in his own company.  

Enraged, Ikenna joins her friends in enlisting in the Praetorian Trials, the brutal trials that determine who will make it as one of the Republic's most elite soldiers, for only those Praetorians could have killed her grandfather, and she is determined to find out the culprit and who ordered the hit.  But what Ikenna doesn't realize is that the trials are fatal to 3/4 of candidates, meaning she'll be hard pressed to survive them....even if she wasn't already a target of racist classmates and instructors who might not have ulterior motives to kill her.....
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The Blood Trials has what's a pretty classical setup, to the point where some plot points are very predictable.  You have the brash youngster set up on her quest of revenge by the words of a supposedly trustworthy family friend, with him pointing her at a potential suspect, a person she doesn't know who was close to her grandfather.  You have the mixed race character facing severe prejudice from the society she lives in, particularly from the privileged rich asshole children of the country's leaders.  And of course you have the best friends who keep Ikenna going even as she fears telling them all the truths she's hiding, causing breakdowns between them in the worst places.  As I name these things, I'm sure you can picture how they're going to go somewhat and how you've seen them in the past.  

But the Blood Trials mixes these in with other ideas and concepts, and well the very well done character of Ikenna, such that it manages to work pretty well for most of the book.  For one thing, Ikenna isn't just mixed race and hated because of that, she actually has another secret part of her heritage giving her access to a powerful magic that is feared throughout her country for what it did to them at the hands of their enemy....and with her impulsive nature, the chance that she'll accidentally release it is always real and a constant fear.  This magic makes Ikenna's decision to hold some secrets actually logical - after all Ikenna fears the true nature of this magic herself, so what will others think (and her grandfather taught her to hide it). 

For another, Ikenna's blindness in her quest for vengeance, and how that leads her awry, is made very clear to her through this book's brutal plot.  That blindness leads to start using her magic in dangerous ways which start to lead her in dark paths; that blindness also leads her to make decisions in one of the deadly trials that get an ally killed, something that haunts her tremendously.  And in one memorable moment, a no name side character points out that in her blindness, Ikenna isn't really that different from the rich privileged assholes she despises - whereas that side character, who doesn't have any privileged background, took the time to know the names of all their fellow aspirants, Ikenna only knows a few, just like the rich privileged assholes only took the time to know the few they deemed worthy.  It's really well done, and well goes along with Ikenna's impulsive nature that leads her to even more disastrous and sometimes not disastrous results, like a moment of horniness that leads to her jumping on a boy. 

And Ikenna's quest for vengeance comes among a world that is really interesting and well done for the most part.  You have the "Republic", which is really basically an Oligarchy ruled by a bunch of rich and powerful families, whose squabbling and greed once nearly resulted in their own deaths, and who might lead them to the same again in their arrogance.  It's a military oligarchy, with themes of service to the state being prevalent, even as it features tremendous racism and misogyny towards those who aren't the state's equivalent of white men, neither of which Ikenna is of course.  Then you have the feared Blood Empire, which certainly doesn't seem good....and yet also has the power of gods the Republic has forsaken behind their magical gifts, gifts that are in Ikenna's blood and call to her.  And then you have side nations, like the one where Ikenna's other racial mix comes from,, and others with whom the Republic should be allied...if they can get their cultural superiority out of their own ass. 

It's in this latter element that The Blood Trials kind of falters, as the plot shifts from the incredibly deadly trials - which are extremely brutal and test everything about Ikenna and her friends as most of them are killed in the process - to a diplomatic conference which introduces these side nations and Ikenna's connections to them....and it just sort of comes out of nowhere even as these connections are hinted at earlier in the book.  The result feels kind of rushed as these side nations play a major part in the epic cliffhanger, because well, you don't really ever get to know these people and who they are and how they feel to Ikenna before things go awry and betrayals hit hard, and Ikenna's and her allies actions at one point in the end are so gullible that it's almost unbelievable.  The only other element perhaps that the book falters on is the romantic subplot, as Ikenna's attraction to the love interest isn't really developed until right as she jumps on his bones, and just feels like its obligatory to this type of book honestly, even if it develops fine from there (and features a surprisingly nice sex scene). 

Still, this book's cliffhanger ending more than intrigues and if certain elements feel shortchanged, well I'm curious to see where they go in the second book.  So I'll be back for the sequel to The Blood Trials, and this definitely gets my recommendation for worth a try in the process.  

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