King of Battle and Blood Review

Their Union Is His Revenge. Isolde de Lara considers her wedding day her death day. To end a years-long war, she is to marry vampire king, Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev, and kill him. ⠀ But her assassination attempt is thwarted and Adrian threatens that if Isolde tries kill him again, he will raise her as the undead. Faced with the possibility of becoming the thing she hates most, Isolde seeks other ways to defy him and survive the brutal vampire court. ⠀ Except it isn’t the court she fears most—it’s Adrain. Despite their undeniable chemistry, she wonders why the king——fierce, savage, merciless—chose her as consort. ⠀ The answer will shatter her world.

General Impressions

"King of Battle and Blood" was one of those books I was really excited about reading: genre-wise, this story seemed to tick everything I wanted from it and I was really looking forward to my first Scarlett St. Clair book since the author and her other works are extremely beloved online.

I think of this book as ACOTAR (substitute fae with vampires), meets The Witcher with a sprinkling of Nevernight and Shadow and Bone wrapped in indie romance and pure escapism. I flew through the first 3/4 of this novel in a few hours. The story grabbed me easily: Isolde started as a compelling and original heroine with wants and trauma that were easy to identify with, the world-building, if not jaw-dropping, was complex enough and I liked quite a few of the secondary characters (LGBTQ rep!!) and their own attempts to influence or gain power over Isolde. All of those positive traits though began to pale the more repetitive the language and arguments between characters became and the more I started to dislike Isolde and that shamble of insta-romance she was part of.

I completely understand if the author did not want to write another teenage girl falling in love with a centuries-old vampire, but there is no way in hell a twenty-six-year-old woman would ever behave in such a childish way. What I liked in Isolde from the beginning was that she was a character with her own ideas and skills and was not afraid of toeing outside the line in pursuit of HER own goals. Even when her expectations for the future were derailed by Adrian and his conquest, she adapts her plans rather than foregoing them. This was a character that believed in her own worth and capabilities no matter what.

As challenges mount up though, all that promise revealed itself to be an illusion since every time that she encountered a problem or fought with someone she either resorted to the same old tired bratty argument of "I'm the princess/queen and you should respect me because of that alone" without a thought to the validity of the arguments against her or simply stabbed centuries-old vampires. That would be alright if it happened once but it happened a dozen times with the same results/consequences. She went from a strong independent woman to someone that always had to be saved by others when she didn't faint/fell sick/was attacked only to wake in a bed after Adrian had dealt with the problem by murdering someone, which of course resulted in someone else wanting revenge.

One of the biggest problems I had with this book was the name choices: some I simply disliked but I could glance over as long as they were original and not lifted from cities around the world. The ones I truly hated though were those that resembled names of places in other fictional worlds too much for my comfort. The mythology inside it was at least interesting, from the author's take on vampires to the entirely female pantheon inside this world which I really liked, even if we only touched it briefly and the descriptions made it easy to picture everything from dresses to settings.

Eventually, I did reach a point where if I hadn't been so close to the ending and thankful for the publisher for sending me this book I would have DNFed it, which I'm glad I didn't because most of the good things I had to say about the book happen towards the end.

One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was the author's Native American roots and if that would inform the story or characters in any way. Isolde is the product of an arranged marriage between two people from different cultures and ethnicities, who grows up completely isolated from her mother's people and costumes. One of the constants and most human traits in this book is Isolde's sense of loss not only of her mother's love but history and culture when she has lived all her life being the only person that looked like her.

Superficially this is a colour blind world, with characters with all kinds of skin tones and races, and where Isolde's royal status is never questioned. And yet, as the story unfolds and we see more of the world, all the comments previously made about Isolde's larger hips and breasts, the way she kept mentioning the colour of her skin, the way some servants complained about doing her hair and men complained about her refusal to conform to their superiority started to be impossible to ignore as we see what the fate of a lot of characters who share Isolde's appearance is. It eventually becomes clear that although Isolde loves both parts of her heritage, many of the people she loves and trust don't and expect her to be loyal and proud only of one.

I wasn't a fan of the romance, at least until the final mystery was solved and their attraction started to feel grounded in something other than instant lust but I did like how sexually disinhibited Isolde was when it came to her own desires considering she came from a more conservative place and then marries into a culture on the opposite side of the spectrum. It's always nice to see a heroine masturbate for any other reason than to please her love interest's eyes and then become an asexual creature whenever he is not around and even though the sex scenes themselves didn't do much for me, at least Adrian went down on her a lot, so there's that.

Conclusions

Even though the lead up to the ending was one of the most rewarding and emotion-packed parts of this book, I did find it subscribed to a form I am encountering more and more across Romantic Fantasy where distillation of a more successful novel, with easily spotted tropes and inspirations ends up on a cliff hanger after a massive plot twist/revelation that forces you to read the sequel.

That being said, Isolde does a lot of growing into the kind of leader that she claimed to have been all along, and as a reader, it was particularly rewarding to see a woman refusing to sacrifice for people that see her as lesser for her gender and in this case, perhaps race as well. I'm here for this trend of female anti-heroes that refuse to forgive the unforgivable and instead of appeasing powerful men, choose instead to seek the power to lead and mould the world as they see fit.

Although I don't think this was the book for me, the way that the author addressed consent, female desire and race most of all, were worth the read, and I hope the people who need this story and characters are able to find it.

Thank you so much to Black Crow PR and Bloom Reads for this copy.

Rating: 3/5