Blood Sings and Blood Binds are the first two installments of the Beyond the Gloom series by Denisa Mih. Blood Binds publishes this coming Sunday, January 11th. I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of the second one along with a copy of the first from The Nerd Fam.

These were advertised as Underworld meets The Matrix. For me, that’s an irresistible pitch. I had to apply. I’ve always had a weakness for vampires and dystopian sci-fi. They can be even more fun when combined. While I typically space out books in a series, I read these two back to back. I wanted to review them the same way.

Book One: Blood Sings

Summary:

Aurora may be a vampire, even Dracula’s heir, but she refuses to be a monster. Her primary motivation is reducing bloodshed in the war that has been plaguing her people for a century. Unfortunately, her power to do so is far more limited than she’d like. Her family clan no longer holds the power it used to, and even her own mother conspires against her plans while insisting she has Aurora’s best interests in mind.

On her birthday, Aurora discovers she’s been promised against her will to a true monster. It forces the realization that she can’t make the difference she wants from inside the palace. Her best friend at her side, the two fake death and go under deep cover with the elite force known as the Black Guild. With the Guild’s help – especially the mysterious Harbinger – Aurora starts to learn what the war truly is, and what she needs to do to stop it.

My Thoughts:

This book and I didn’t start off on the right foot. While I love a good appendix or glossary, finding a terminology guide or character reference at the beginning of a book rather than the end is a red flag for me. I want to learn those details organically from the story as its told. I should not have to memorize a crash course to understand the first chapter. Abundant fictional terminology can be perfectly fine, as can a huge ensemble of characters. The key is to introduce each in a memorable way. That is not presenting all of them at once before I have any context. Aside from three (Aurora, Harbinger, and Selena), each of the characters I met felt more like a concept than an individual. There wasn’t enough insight into each personality. I couldn’t always understand behaviors or responses I saw, including major shifts in conversational tone.

However, once I pushed past that opening, I began finding pieces to appreciate. The worldbuilding focuses only on several locations in this first installment, but feels thorough in those areas. It’s easy to feel the ambiance of each room characters step into. The Underworld vibes it promised are potent. It has absolutely followed through in that regard. The settings, the outfits, and the political conflict all contribute to this. Similarities to The Matrix are subtler and lie mostly in a single piece of technology that sees occasional use.

The relationship between the two leads felt natural, albeit fast. The chemistry was obvious. There were a few times where I lost my suspension of disbelief, however. Some of Harbinger’s behavior toward Aurora is reminiscent of her past trauma in ways the author doesn’t always seem to recognize. As a result, Aurora’s responses can be confusing or jarring.

As the first installment in the series, Blood Sings does a good job of setting the stage for the rest of the books to come. By the end, I had a fundamental understanding of the world, its major events, and its major powers. I was also just starting to feel like I knew who was who inside the Black Guild. It’s hard to say that the book did much more than that, because it didn’t feel like any arc had reached a conclusion. Rather, everything was still building until the moment of the cliffhanger ending. It made the book feel incomplete.

I was thankfully able to immediately dive into the second book, Blood Binds, and I’m glad I did. It felt like reading the second half of this first book. If I had read this one on its own, I think I would have a less favorable opinion of the series than I do now. Book two is where the story really starts to take off.

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence & Injuries, Gore, Blood, War, SA (Allegorical), Suicide, War, Panic Disorder, Vomit, Graphic Sexual Content, Genocide, Parent Loss, Racism, Torture

Book Two: Blood Binds

Summary:

Aurora was just starting to find her place in the Black Guild. Now everything has been thrown into question all over again. She no longer knows who she can trust. In the palace, she knew she had been shielded from the worst of the worst. On the battlefield at least she expected honesty. However, it turns out that even her fellow soldiers have been keeping secrets. Now she’ll have to figure out who can really be trusted and how to get the truth from them. From there, she can figure out for sure what’s been fueling this endless war and how to finally put a stop to it.

My Thoughts:

I am very glad that I was able to read both books back to back. That’s not simply because the first book ends on a cliffhanger. It’s because this second book made up for so many of the shortcomings in the first. Readers finally get a fuller picture of the powers at play in the war. We start seeing more of the nuance and complexity in the politics of the world. Most importantly, we spend enough time with the secondary characters to learn who they really are. This is where I was able to feel more deeply for these characters and raised the emotional stakes.

Relationships between characters also become more clear, and the effects they have on each other. This is especially true for Aurora and Harbinger. We see their relationship deepen, and we gain an appreciation for it even when it’s not perfectly healthy. Both characters have endured trauma and are still learning to carry it. There were still some moments I wondered why Aurora wasn’t drawing parallels between Harbinger’s behavior and her past trauma, but I had much more understanding around their treatment of one another.

Blood Binds is also the book where Aurora’s path forward begins to solidify. It’s difficult to root for a protagonist with unidentified motivations. Once Aurora knows what her plan is, you want her to succeed, even if she still has some growing to do. There are some frustrating moments along her journey where she could do better and she knows it. Nonetheless, I wanted to see her come out on top. This one is another cliffhanger and I haven’t seen the release date for the third, but the story feels more complete. My hopes for this series have risen, and I’ll be looking forward to the next installment.

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence & Injuries, Gore, Blood, War, SA (Allegorical), Suicide, War, Panic Disorder, Vomit, Graphic Sexual Content, Genocide, Parent Loss, Racism, Torture

After I Finished Blood Sings and Blood Binds

I put a little bit of thinking into what I wanted my first read of the new year to be. I ended up decided it would be something short. A while back, I had read the first few poems from a recent eBook by a writer I’ve been following for about twenty years. His work has always inspired me, not only in my own writing endeavors, but also in the way I choose to examine the world around me. I decided that his latest poetry compilation could be a good way to calibrate my compass.

My next review will be for Mercy and Bullets by Tony Brown.