I received an invitation to ARC read Silver & Blood by a representative of the publisher after I’d recently read and loved another ARC from them. If they were so sure I’d like it, I figured I’d give it a shot even without really knowing the author. They were absolutely correct. I had an amazing time reading through this one, and will be eagerly looking for more. I didn’t want to put this one down.

Silver & Blood publishes today, January 27th and is now available everywhere books are sold including on Bookshop.org.

Summary:

Riela is a mage. Sort of. She has power, enough to have once saved her entire village, but she has no idea how to use it. That doesn’t stop her neighbors from demanding she solve their problems for them. When they demand she rid them of a deadly beast in the nearby ancient magical forest, they don’t leave her any choice. None of them know that the forest won’t let any bearer of magic out again once they’ve set foot inside.

She’s lucky (she thinks) when another mage and his enormous wolf appear in time to save her from being torn to shreds by wild magical creatures. He offers her protection within the walls of his castle inside the forest. It’s her best option, so of course she accepts. She doesn’t know she’s meddling with a power much greater than a human mage. The protection spells on the castle keep out far more dangerous enemies than the ravenous animals of the forest.

My Thoughts:

This one had me hooked from the very first page and I didn’t want to put it down. The book dropped me directly into the story, and the voice of the narrative would not let go. From the very beginning, the world feels rich and lived in. I actually had to stop and double check that there wasn’t a previous book about these characters that I had missed. It wasn’t that I felt there was anything I was missing, but that everything felt so well-established. There were information gaps, of course, but I could always trust that the answers would be forthcoming and it kept me turning the pages frantically to find them.

A big part of that was Riela learning her magic. She has no understanding of it and has never had anyone to teach her. She finally meets another magic user in Garrick, but her powers are like nothing he’s ever seen. That doesn’t mean she can’t help him break his curse. In fact, she’s reigniting a flicker of hope for him. The more they dig for answers, the deeper the mystery gets. Meanwhile, his magical castle is happily granting her polite requests and she continually breaks his protection enchantments by accident. It has a lot of Beauty and the Beast vibes.

I also loved the characters and their banter. This is true both for the romance between the two extremely stubborn and previously-wounded leads, and also platonic relationships with secondary characters who come in. The wolf, Grim, was a particularly fun character who only continued to get better as the book went on. Most of the main cast has trust issues, as one might expect when dealing too often with fae-like beings. Watching them navigate their bonds with one another was aggravating at times, but moreso heartwarming when they connect in spite of everything. Even when the miscommunication trope reared its head, I found it far more tolerable than I usually do because it felt natural in the circumstances. It’s too often an obvious plot device, but here it made sense and worked in a way that didn’t make me roll my eyes and want to put down the book.

While the ending is thankfully not a brutal cliffhanger, it’s clear there’s more of the story to come. Personally, I am eagerly anticipating the next installment. I cannot wait to see where this is going next.

Content Warnings: Blood, Graphic Depictions of Violence and Injury, Panic Disorders, Graphic Sexual Content, Torture, Vomit, Confinement, Self-Injury, Death of Parent, SA, Body Horror

After I Finished Silver & Blood

I’ve got a big pile of ARCs that release over the next few months. It’s going to be a lot of reading for me, but I’m excited about all of them. The next one that’s coming out is a horror-thriller I’ve been looking forward to. It’s about a mother searching for her missing teen, and a creepy local legend that appears to be somehow connected.

My next review will be for The Bone Queen by Will Shindler.