Tuesday, December 27, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn



Bloodmarked is the second novel in Tracy Deonn's Legendborn Cycle, which began with 2020's Legendborn. Legendborn was one of my two favorite books of 2020, a phenomenal YA Urban Fantasy novel dealing with the mythology of King Arthur, the struggles of a black teenage girl against generational trauma and systematic racism, and a struggle in particular with personal grief of losing a loved one. It was a tremendous novel, with a tremendous heroine in its teen girl Bree, a student in an early high school program at UNC, and a tremendous setting that took, respected, and subverted all at once the Arthurian Mythos as it married it to the realities of today's world for Black Americans. So I have been looking forward to Bloodmarked for a long time.

And Bloodmarked continues the story in generally really strong fashion, continuing Bree's story now that she's recognized the historical sources of her own power and as she struggles to deal with others' expectations and wants of her now that that power is out in the open....expectations that are tempered by how Bree doesn't look like how those others were raised to believe such a power-wielder should be. The story again works really well as it deals with more struggles not only now with grief, but with the historical burdens of one's ancestors, especially the ancestors of black slaves in today's African Americans like Bree. Bree faces a struggle to control her power and an internal conflict due to these burdens, as well as the modern racism and prejudice Bree faces as the unwilling heir of a mostly White European power order, and it all comes together largely well. That said, the novel's love triangle romance is a bit frustrating and formulaic, it doesn't have enough time devoted to breathing and examining various status quos, and it again relies upon a cliffhanger setup that feels more added on last minute than a natural part of the book. So it's very good, even if not as good as Book 1, but an excellent bridge between that book and the eventual conclusion.

Trigger Warnings: Historical Rape of an Ancestor during Slavery as Backstory.

SPOILER WARNING: It is impossible to discuss this book further or in more detail without spoiling the ending of book 1. If you intend to read book 1 and haven't yet, stop here and do not go further.



----------------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------Bree infiltrated the Legendborn Order because she was convinced they were behind her mother's death, due to the false memories she had uncovered that seemed tied to one of the Order's Merlins. What she could never have expected was to find herself at the center of multiple paths of magic, such as her black ancestor's ancestral power of Root, which gifts her the power of a medium or the power that her ancestor Vera (a runaway slave) tied to her own bloodline in an unholy bargain. Even more unexpected was the reality of her ties to the Legendborn itself, for, through the violent rape of one of her ancestors, Bree is the heir and Scion to King Arthur himself....the powerful King who started the Legendborn order, and who is begging Bree to let him take charge to lead the Legendborn once more against the demonic powers rising once more for a fateful confrontation.

Now Bree has to deal with an Order that has little idea what to do with her, a Black girl in a largely white European Order, who thought themselves holy warriors of justice at best....and heirs to a rich secret society at worst. More than that, she has to deal with the fact that the boy she loves, Nick, the boy who was supposed to be Arthur's real scion, has been kidnapped by his manipulative and ambitious father. So when the Order takes action to take control of Bree and to prevent her from acting to save not just Nick but the world itself, Bree finds herself on the run with just a few allies...as she attempts to figure out a way to control her power before it calls every demon from the present and her own past right to her.

And then there's Selwyn Kane, the Merlin who was sworn to Nick and who once tried to kill her, who Bree finds herself drawing closer and closer to, in an attraction that is clearly mutual....even if it might be deadly to engage in. But Bree and Selwyn will need to stay together to have a chance at survival, especially when a dark force from the pasts of both of Bree's heritages begins to rise once more, with intents on seizing the power behind Bree's bloodline.....
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One of Legendborn's strongest themes - and it had a lot and did all of them well - was its examination of struggles with grief and Peristent Complex Bereavement Disorder (PCBD), and how it prevented a person like Bree from moving forward after the death of her mother. Bloodmarked deals with a different from of grief and burden - the burden of grief and violence done to one's ancestors, and how that puts pressure on one to try and compensate or achieve recompense for those wrongs. Here, Bree finds herself not just pressed by the obnoxious King Arthur, who simply want so take control of her for the sake of waging his war against his old demonic enemies, but by her ancestors, such as Vera, who started this line by cursing it with the one daughter of a time limitation in exchange for power, and the ancestors who came in between who had to run constantly so that Bree could have a chance at living. The result until the book's satisfactory conclusion for now of this conflict, when (without spoiling) Bree finds a way to assert her own worth independent of her ancestors while still recognizing them, is a strong plotline that shows Bree constantly struggling to find a way to claim her power without disappointing all these women who she knows came before her and deserved so so much better.

And Bree has to do all this in a world that remains angled against her so so much. For example, the leaders of the Legendborn Order, the Regents, are of course quite racist as you'd expect, as some of the underlings were as well as we saw last book, but their racism also stems from the fact that Bree isn't a person who will fall into line under their control, to allow them to remain in power. Like so much in our own society, the Regents - despite not being chosen to have the magical power to fight demons that the Order is meant for - are obsessed with their own power and control and wealth, and while they felt confident they could control a white boy Scion raised to obey them, Bree's coming from beyond the order, and not looking like the Order is too much. And while not all of the Order feels that way, as Bree finds herself allied with a set of Order members who are loyal to the mission and to her, including another black Order member who had to deal with her own prejudice (in a really noteworthy scene of dialogue), even some of the ones not loyal to the Regents see her as an obstacle who should be dealt with...or are blinded by their own prejudice and pains. And even the Rootwielders who Bree identifies far easier with, the black women whose powers are those taught by their ancestors but not tied to them (and are merely borrowed rather than seized) have issues identifying with Bree's predicament at times, due in part to her ancestors' heretical acts as well as Bree's unwilling ties to the Order through the rape of her ancestor.

And then there's of course Bree's struggle with her feelings toward Selwyn Kane, the boy who frustrated her so much last book for not believing her, who she now wants only to stay alive and to find a way like his mother (seemingly) to repress the demon side he worries will consume him. As the first book hinted, and as this book makes clear in its summary and beyond, Selwyn forms a second love interest for Bree, one who essentially forms a complement rather than a rival for Nick (while this is essentially a love triangle and there's no longer a romantic wanting between Selwyn and Nick as there once was, the book never positions Selwyn as a rival for Bree's attentions as much as an addition, as if it is aiming for a Poly relationship with Bree having both boys). And while It's nice that Bree's attraction to Selwyn isn't painted as some wrong towards Nick, this relationship is probably the weakest part of the book, because Sel remains kind of a jerk who tends to act hastily without trusting Bree to give her consent towards various things, in ways that aren't fully violative but do get close enough that you kind of wish Bree would ditch him to the curb. And the book keeps going on towards drawing them closer and then pushing them apart over and over and it gets a bit annoying so you'd wish it would just get the two of them together already.

The other weak part of the plot honestly is that with the exception of one part, the part called "Volition", there is rarely time for Bree and the story to breathe and explore changes in the status quo, which does hamper their impact a bit. It works for the most part, but it's notable how major changes to what Bree knows rarely get a chance to be explored before she's suddenly facing something else, like time at a safe house that lasts basically all of one chapter. And the final chapter sets up a cliffhanger in a way that again feels like it was tacked on, just like in the first book, rather than something that developes naturally. But the story still works and works really really well, as it explores ancestral grief and burdens and Bree's attempts to balance her ancestors' expectations, the pain they suffered, with her own wants and needs, especially as she finds herself hunted and chased for reasons that aren't her fault even by those who should be respecting and acknowledging her. And the ending, cliffhanger aside, is very satisfying as Bree comes to a conclusion and choice that makes sense to take control of her life in a way that she never has before...even if that choice may not quite be a smart one.

Really excited for the final chapter of this series.

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