In Brighton, blood means everything. Long live King Magnus.
In the kingdom of Brighton, a President-turned-King offers poor teens the chance to join KEY, the King’s Education for Youth. Seventeen-year-old Reina Torres jumps at the chance to be of service to her country, wanting to learn more about Brighton’s history and future through the Media industry. 
The King himself takes an interest in Reina, offering private interviews; he soon commands her to marry his cruel son. Reina, however, cannot ignore her growing feelings for Iris, a fellow KEY student, despite knowing the laws. Reina discovers refusal means punishment much worse than death, and why King Magnus hasn’t aged in decades, thanks to his KEY program.

Liz Long painted a grim and terribly close to home picture with The Blood King. The book is a clear political statement about the current state of affairs in The United States (the king is even written as appearing to have a slightly orange skin tone at one point). In this fabled kingdom called Brighton, there is blatant class warfare, racism, mysogyny, and homphobia interlaced in every way the king rules his land, and this is all very obvious from the start. Protagonist Reina Torres comes up from the ghettos that surround the heart of the Kingdom of Brighton and enters KEY. This is King Magnus’s academy that he uses to “help the underprivileged”. The feel of society in The Blood King is very similar to the society that is present in books like Ready Player One or The Hunger Games. It’s a struggle to survive, so education is a joke, and children are very well needed as a part of the workforce. Beyond this initial hook, the book was difficult to really sink into, so the reading moved slowly. The first half of the story was mostly predictable but certainly driven by morbid curiosity. Reina is clearly starry eyed during the beginning of her stay at KEY, painfully so. Her first love interest, Iris, developed very naturally, and the first twists in the book that I didn’t see coming were with her character, and immediately after she reveals her secret, the story becomes engaging again. After Reina undergoes horrific torment by the king’s hand, the plot seems to begin to allow for Reina’s character to open up into quite the heroine. However, she becomes quickly re-broken, and that was disappointing to see. Then equally as quickly, she is reignited and develops a second love interest that seemed to develop less naturally, and the story is fairly action packed from that point forward. It was hard to like Reina at first because she had her head in the clouds, and the objective point of the reader is a difficult spot to be in, watching her flow blindly into a system so clearly broken. Further, she does end up becoming a strong heroine, but only after being beaten and battered, and quite frankly across the genre, more women need to come into their strength because they are strong, not because they have been broken. The story arc felt off, like the climax occuring so late into the book, so because of that and the roller coaster of interest, I am taking this book down to four stars. However, by the end of The Blood King, Reina’s character and others took to growing in strides and evolved so much for the bettsr as people. The book seems a certain beginning to a marvelous second installment, so those four remaining stars are strong ones. If a reader is expecting a story arc that is classic in the way it is told, with each book of the series (in this case, a duology) having a climactic middle with rising and falling action on either side, they would be setting themselves up for disappointment. It must be kept in mind that this is only the first half. Therefore, it would logically only contain half of the action. The Blood King is a piece of literature not to be taken lightly, for how far from the truth is it, really? Not far, if you ask me, and I’m very curious to see how “King Magnus’s” Regime falls – both in Brighton and The United States.

4*

The Blood King is currently available at Amazon here

Thanks you to Lady Amber’s Reviews and PR for the review copy.

A beautiful princess must escape one treacherous vow…
And she must do so alone…without a prince to save her. 
Princess Aurelia is bound to the wicked king of Tranen by her mother’s single, dying wish: He must remarry a woman who possesses her same golden hair. 
But Aurelia has magic on her side. Disguised by a cloak made of one-thousand furs, she escapes into the night with only memories of her sordid past and her own will for freedom. 
But after finding safe haven in the beautiful kingdom of Saarland der Licht, will the secret of her identity be compromised when she captures the attention of the captivating Prince Klaus? 

If you think you have had enough of retellings at the moment, you would be very wrong to overlook this one!  At the start of the book the author reminds you that Allerleirauh is based on a Grimm’s fairytale which also stands as a warning that what is to come is neither a light and fluffy Disney story nor will it shy away from the dark origins that that those who have read the originals would expect.  Whilst I know many of the Grimm’s tales, Allerleirauh is one that I had not come across before.  Having since familiarised myself with it I can say that this story stays pretty close to the source, it is very dark at times and extremely uncomfortable to read on occasion, but without that, the story would lose much of its impact and it wouldn’t have the same emotional feel as you follow Aurelia’s dangerous path of escape.

Princess Aurelia is an entirely relatable character, from the day she was born she has been a disappointment, shunned by her parents for not being the male heir so coveted. She is the epitome of sheltered court life, incredibly naive but with a beautiful innocence, a young woman who remains emotionally a little girl when it comes to being starved of a parents love.  When the King starts showing her affection it’s no wonder she jumps at the chance to please him after all those years being ignored.  This makes what she endures all the more heartbreaking as she is too slow to fully put together the puzzle pieces. It was refreshing to have a female lead who didn’t fall into the usual tropes of hidden powers or secret ninja fighting skills, she is just a scared young girl who can’t fight back.

Allerleirauh is split into two parts and I think that was wise as the two parts have markedly different tones. Whilst the first is dark and shocking the second is hopeful with a growing light shining through. The name she adopts of Allerleirauh reflects a cloak she wears to conceal her true identity “of many furs” is the meaning and whilst I don’t want to spoil the story by saying how she gets it, it becomes the mark of her progress in the hope within part two.  She doesn’t let her past define her and whilst she struggles to accept this past she finds herself surrounded by those who accept her unquestioningly.

Despite the darkness this was a book that I absolutely devoured across 2 sittings. The pace and flow of the story was perfect and the writing style really stood out for me.  There was such an ease as I read, that I kept turning the pages almost unknowingly until I was suddenly almost the whole way through!  Whilst original Grimm tales were not lengthy in themselves, Chantal Gadoury manages to manipulate that story so masterfully that even with Allerleirah’s full novel length, none of it feels like padding. This is a book which took me completely by surprise and I don’t hesitate in giving it a full 5*

Allerleirauh is currently available through Parliament House Press at Amazon