Review: The Blood Trials

The Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

"I am Verne Amari's granddaughter. I won't break." 

You really have to hit the ground running to keep up with this story. It's got magic, gods, wars, scifi, fantasy mish mashed all into a New Adult tone. You only get a sense of the world through the characters mentioning things, no solid grounding explanation to the structure of this world. 

It's all told from a first person pov from Ikenna, a nineteen year old who's grandfather just died. Racism and sexism are prevalent in this world and therefore mentioned, acknowledged, and raged against. Ikenna's that her grandfather, who was born of Mareen (dominantly white country) and Khanaian (dominantly Black country) parents and was a Tribunal because of how he won the war for Mareen, didn't just die of a heartattack but was assassinated. This motivates her to go through the Trials, a Hunger Game-ish, SEAL Hell Week like war games that weed out/kill the weak for the strong so they can go on to become Praetorian Guards. Ikenna wants to become a Praetorian so she can get closer to the people in charge and find out who gave the orders for her grandfather to be killed. 

The bulk of the story is the Trials and Ikenna trying to fight through her act first think later rage and discern friend from foe. The first 70% read super fast as you're just trying to keep up with Ikenna and hope for her survival. The last bit ends the trials and then more of the world politics comes into play and it really slowed the story down for me as I still wasn't fully immersed into the world and the moving bits now coming into play. 

Ikenna's also dealing with Blood Magic, it's apparently a power bestowed upon people by the Gods, but the Blood Emperor is who Mareen fought the war against (Ikenna's grandfather won the war for them but his daughter, Ikenna's mother was killed by the emperor). So, Ikenna is trying to hide this part of herself to not be killed as assumed a traitor. 

There's, obviously, a lot of moving parts and elements, but having most of the story centered around Ikenna helped, it was when the outside world that hadn't been flushed out too clearly came in, that I struggled. 

This ends on a cliffhanger and I'm going to dive right into the second because I'm very curious to see how it all ends up. If you can handle some worldbuilding pushed to the side, want some scifi and fantasy elements, a step above YA, and want to see a lead character not hold back their anger/rage (it did get frustrating at times as I wanted Ikenna to stop, take a breathe, and think), then this would be a hold onto your butts one to pick up.

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