#the blood trials

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's New Works by Black Authors TBR - Part 1

Category: Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction & Science Fiction

[read-alert]

Listen, main character, I know you don't know you're in a book, so you don't know just how likely it is that your murdered grandfather's best friend is his murderer, but you can't keep doing "well, there's no point investigating him even though he has the means, there's no way he'd do that" more than halfway through the book and after you've disproven your other suspects

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Graduate or Die

I'm not here to talk about specific books, but I do want to talk a bit about a trope (although ngl, I am SO tempted to call this a setting rather than a trope) that has been slowly evolving and getting popularized in books. Graduate or die is, generally speaking, applicable when a story is set in a school or college or training center and once you are accepted, you can only leave by surviving and graduating...or dying.

Yes, this is basically exactly what it says on the tin.

But I'm a bit intrigued by this spin on school fiction because as far as I'm aware, this is a recent development. Previous school stories didn't tend to be quite this deadly, and I'm seriously wondering if some of this is stemming from the shift in how North American (and let's be real, primarily US) schools are perceived by students. Given the massive rise in school shootings, is it any wonder that there might be more of an interest in stories where schools are no longer the safe-ish spaces they used to be in literature? Even literature like A Separate Peace, which focuses on a death in a school, doesn't have the graduate or die aspect. Phineas's death is a tragedy tied up in a metric boatload of guilt about culpability and intentions, but neither Gene nor Phineas EXPECTS to die going into school, and they don't expect a certain number of their classmates not to survive.

But that is very much the reality that Ikenna, Violet, and El walk into at the Praetorian Academy, Basgiath War College, and the Scholomance, respectively. They expect their classmates to die, are well aware they could die, and there really isn't a whole hell of a lot to do other than survive.

I feel like I'm just describing The Hunger Games with extra steps here, but there is a different feel to graduate or die stories than there was to the dystopian genre Suzanne Collins popularized. Possibly what I'm getting from at least Violet and Ikenna is a distinctly "grad school" feel. These protagonists aren't teenagers, these books aren't YA. Vi and Ikeena are grown-ass women who made choices and have specific, concrete goals in a way that Katniss never really did. Even El lacks some of the YA flailing, and I think that's from the structure of a school setting. It's much harder to flail around and be lost when you have teachers and a library RIGHT THERE.

I'm interested to see if the graduate or die mini boom expands at all and can actually be tied to a reaction to all the gun violence in schools and universities or if this is just a bit of a fluke. We shall have to see, and if anyone has any additional thoughts on this, please reblog with them!

[simonespeaks]

sick and twisted that it’s caiman and greysen that ended up being on ikenna’s side at the end and not selene

[scarlethoodi]

Ikenna Amari in The Blood Gift

[departmentq]

Noticed this fantasy novel in the newly released paperback section.

Then I stepped up and took a closer look:

I'll be damned if the character on the cover doesn't resemble a captain of a mushroom powered, century hopping federation starship.

[shxpeshifterr]

[just0nemorepage]

The Blood Trials || N.E. Davenport || The Blood Gift Duology #1 || 448 pages Top 3 Genres: Fantasy / Science Fiction / Young Adult

Synopsis: It's all about blood.

The blood spilled between the Republic of Mareen and the armies of the Blood Emperor long ago. The blood gifts of Mareen's deadliest enemies. The blood that runs through the elite War Houses of Mareen, the rulers of the Tribunal dedicated to keeping the republic alive.

The blood of the former Legatus, Verne Amari, murdered.

For his granddaughter, Ikenna, the only thing steady in her life was the man who had saved Mareen. The man who had trained her in secret, not just in martial skills, but in harnessing the blood gift that coursed through her.

Who trained her to keep that a secret.

But now there are too many secrets, and with her grandfather assassinated, Ikenna knows two things: that only someone on the Tribunal could have ordered his death, and that only a Praetorian Guard could have carried out that order.

Bent on revenge as much as discovering the truth, Ikenna pledges herself to the Praetorian Trials--a brutal initiation that only a quarter of the aspirants survive. She subjects herself to the racism directed against her half-Khanaian heritage and the misogyny of a society that cherishes progeny over prodigy, all while hiding a power that--if found out--would subject her to execution...or worse. Ikenna is willing to risk it all because she needs to find out who murdered her grandfather...and then she needs to kill them.

Mareen has been at peace for a long time...

Ikenna joining the Praetorians is about to change all that.

Publication Date: April 2022. / Average Rating: 4.22. / Number of Ratings: ~3420.

[lez0mbie]

just finished reading The Blood Trials by N. E. Davenport and it was really good! especially when i got to the last few hundred pages or so, when the huge twists came up and i had no idea how the book was going to end! have to say, i did manage to predict a few of the things and it was a bit frustrating that the main character Ikenna was still clueless about certain things, but those last few twists really made up for it. also have to say that the writing was iffy in bits, in that Davenport has a habit of telling, not showing, in parts that don’t need the explanation, so that kind of took me out of the story a little bit. the trials were really good! i would’ve liked to see more of the Accursed creatures, but they were horrifying nonetheless. the Praetorian leaders in charge of the aspirants going through the trials gave off a heavy Divergent vibe, in that there were two officers in charge, one good and considerate (Darius) and the other is bad, takes pleasure in their pain and killing them etc (Chance), so that felt a bit cliche.

but, by far, the worst thing in this book was the ‘romance’ if you can even call it that. let’s say it was a moment of lust between Ikenna and Darius. why was it bad? for one thing, it comes out of nowhere. like he sees her in a towel and she sees the bulge in his pants and suddenly they have the hots for each other. i already assumed they’d get together at some point but there still should’ve been at least one or two clues, a bit of an ease into it. the writing on the sex was bad, like it made me laugh, which i’m sure wasn’t Davenport’s goal, and it spanned pages! and the way it ended made me laugh too bc look at this quote from it:

‘I’m not a virgin. I’ve had sex before.

This wasn’t sex. I’ve never had what just transpired.’

i’m sorry you’re telling me these two kiss, he fingers her for what seems like a minute or two then slips his dick in her pussy and thrusts (to summarise plainly) - and that was the out-of-this-world sex? that’s it? it was so good she couldn’t even call it sex? lmao.

nevertheless, i’m waiting in anticipation for the second book for everything besides Darius and Ikenna’s relationship lol which i’m sure will develop more strongly in the second instalment. but so much happens and there’s so much betrayal, which i love!

[bajoop-sheeb]

Gladly! The books on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.

Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.

Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.

The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.

Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. Is it subtle? Uh, no. But it’s very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.

The Unbroken by CL Clark. An exploration of what happens when conscription blurs the line between colonizer and colonized.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.

So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Sheree Renée Thomas.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the chokehold romantasy currently has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.

The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.

The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull.

Forged by Blood by Ehigbor Okosun. Ignore the marketing, this book is YA (maybe NA) and you’ll appreciate it more if you approach it as such.

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept up in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[kavaleyre]

• The Hanged Man •

“Compared to what Falin went through? This is nothing.”

[starii-void]

going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with

-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)

-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)

-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)

-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)

-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)

-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)

-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)

-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran

-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy

-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre

-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Sci Fantasy is My New Favorite Thing

Probably the three modes that are best represented on my bookshelf are sword and sorcery, space opera (all the Star Wars) and urban fantasy. I tend not to be a sci fi girl, and any sci fi I do read tends to be extremely soft. So when I saw The Blood Trials described as "sci fantasy" in all the marketing materials, I was intrigued. And then I swallowed Kenna's story in a weekend and thought that the two weeks until the second book came out might kill me. Let's talk The Blood Trials.

UPDATE: Communities of readers are important, because it has been brought to my attention that this book could use some content warnings for gore, violence, and cannibalism. This review doesn't go in detail on those, but please be aware if you read this book! It's adult sci fantasy, not YA, so it gets heavy in places.

I think the first thing we need to do with a book that is explicitly multi-genre is to define some stuff. Depending on who you ask, science fiction is either its own genre of speculative fiction (a category of fiction that literally covers everything that is not the real-world here-and-now) or a subgenre of fantasy. That ambiguity--and the preponderance of internet memes that go "Sci fi is when [Actor] looks like this, and fantasy is when [Same Actor] looks like this"--really highlight the amount of crossover that happens between these genres. Now, if you want to highlight some differences, a pretty simple one is that sci fi deals with science, technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes/multiverses, and aliens, whereas fantasy usually involves magic. And then Arthur C. Clarke pops up with "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and totally muddies the water again. Thanks, Art.

So if the general is all wibbly wobbly timey wimey, let's get specific. What does Sci Fantasy mean for N.E. Davenport's The Blood Trials? I'm going to tell you that it comes down to the fact that the book has both super futuristic technology and a kickass soft magic system. I'd say the sci fi/technology elements are pretty soft in the grand scheme of things too. The preponderance of soft magic and soft sci fi is kind of wild, given how hard and sharp-edged the narrative is. Although that's just this whole book; it carefully balances opposites to create a whirlwind of dynamic forces wrapped in Ikenna's grief and rage and narrative threads.

I also desperately want to describe this book as "dystopian," but I don't want to give you Hunger Games vibes, because that's not the vibe I got with this book, and crucially, Kenna isn't a Katniss analogue. Kenna is in a social position or relative privilege (although that's not a simple statement, and systemic racism in the world makes that privilege less privilegey than it would be for a white character). If this book is dystopian, it is so in the broader sense of dystopian fiction, which offers "fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable." Kenna is about to break power structures both within her society and in the broader world.

I'm not sure if there is a specific genre for "trainee endures and survives literally murderous elite supesoldier training," but if there is, The Blood Trials falls into that genre too. These parts of the book are where the most Hunger Games vibes are, but the context is significantly different.

Then we get to the characters. Our cast of characters are just incredible in their range, given that the context is completely elite supersoldiers and trainees. Kenna is out here to get the credential to then burn it all down. Selene is out here to avoid being turned into a socialite brood mare and have just...all the sex, Zayne is almost too sweet to be real in the situation, Chance is objectively a homicidal zealot, and Reed is so clearly traumatized by his life that his survival skills are clashing HARD with his innate compassion. Caiman has a hella interesting character redemption arc, and towards the end of the book, Dannica comes out of left field to be a hard contender for my favorite secondary character.

I don't have enough good things to say about this book, and I cannot wait for The Blood Gift to Release in a couple of weeks!

[simonespeaks]

i can’t believe mareen got ikenna to do their stupid fucking bidding and now she’s openly betrayed her second family for mareen of all fucking places. she has to grapple with the fact that she did this for a place that’s done nothing but abuse and revile her and her grandfather, call her slurs more than her given name, assassinated her grandfather, and made multiple attempts on her life. i’m so sick for her.

[seagull9111]

as a fandom we need to talk about how funny this scene was

romans: *nervous*

nico: *enjoying himself*