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Destiny can pick someone else.
Evil is slipping through the cracks of its prison, and all Soleden trembles in its wake. Yet some would harness that evil to their own ends, and first among them is Idla, the sorceress queen bent on distorting the world.
Only one can stand in her way: Jayden. Upon realizing her mark as the prophesied Deliverer, Jayden conceals herself from her enemies and her Feravolk countrymen. But after the harm the Feravolk caused to her family, she s loath to rescue the not-so-innocent.
Hiding her mark was never easy, but now that Jayden knows both Queen Idla and the Feravolk are after her, hiding her gift of the Blood Moon will be impossible.
Series: Children of the Blood Moon (Book 1)
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publisher: Enclave (October 21, 2016)
Page Count: 382 pages
Getting this book is kind of a funny story. XD A friend of mine accidentally sent the book to my house instead of hers and she's international and just said keep it. I'd seen the book before and heard of the author before so I was like "Huh thanks. I'll check this out."
The Plot: This is a spin on the chosen one trope and a unique one at that. The story went into a lot of point of views and I feel like one in particular never was quite wrapped up, so I'm hoping that thread comes to better fruition in the next book. The plot held my attention and I didn't feel like it dragged, but I definitely liked the latter half more than the first half because it felt like the stakes were higher.
The Characters: This book goes into quite a few point of views: Jayden, Ryan, Ethan, Logan (I smell a pattern), and Rebekah (the odd one out in the name trend) plus a bonus POV in the epilogue. I think out of them Ethan was my favorite because I enjoy the protector characters, though beyond POV characters I believe my favorite was Westwind the wolf. ^ ^ The other point of views had good voices, but I didn't latch onto them quite as much as I would have liked. I think the talents are fun and some of the characters have cool backstories, though.
The Setting: This is a high fantasy world, so there's a lot of plants, creatures, and magic. I really like the black lions that smell like lavender. That's so creepy. XD And I like that feravolk are people that can bond with animals. I love animal bonding.
Epic Things: I like that the chosen ones get weapons that hone their abilities. I think that's really nifty. I also love that the trees talk. I don't care how many books have that I will always love it. I also love that there are epic unicorns.
The Theme: Love is a big theme. Because of a tragedy, Jayden believes love is dangerous, so she closes herself off from other people, professing that it's to protect others, but when truly it's to protect herself. Eventually, she realizes how much damage this can do to her.
Content Cautions: A character almost gets raped and it's implied that someone was raped previously. A character is sexually harassed and physically abused. Multiple characters are stabbed, shot, and die, but that's fantasy for you.
What We Can Take Away For Our Writing:
1.) The Chosen One Trope Can Still Be Freshened Up - In this book, there is more than one possible chosen one and the villain is trying to find the actual chosen ones. I think this is neat as opposed to the typical one person is the chosen person and that's the only option.
How this can be applied to writing: Have you thought of doing a chosen one? There's lots of ways still out there to make it a fresh concept.
2.) Thought Speaking - Logan and Westwind can speak telepathically so to differentiate their speaking from personal thoughts, the author put the mindspeech in italics and quotation marks. Such as: "I'm here."
How this can be applied to writing: Have you thought of separating thought speech this way? Can you use this in your writing?
Conclusion: Overall, I thought it was a pretty good book. Four stars!
About the Author:
S. D. Grimm’s first love in writing is young adult fantasy and science fiction. When she’s not writing or editing, Sarah enjoys reading (of course!), practicing kickboxing and Brazilian jiu jitsu, training dogs, and binge-watching shows with great characters. Her office is anywhere she can curl up with her laptop and at least one large-sized dog.
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