Kesia Lupo

In a city where magic is feared and the dead are worshipped, life is overshadowed by a powerful and devastating storm cloud.One young woman is running for her life. Another is trying to return home. Both are looking for a place where they belong.But what Lena and Constance don't realise is that the storm cloud binds them. Without it, neither can get what she desires. [4ème de couv.]

We Are Blood And Thunder

Kathryn

I’m not really going to do much of a non-spoilery section because I have so much I want to talk about that contains spoilers, but here’s a paragraph on what I thought of the book overall.

Non-Spoilery Section:

Firstly I loved the main characters. The story is told from two perspectives, Lena and Constance. These two women are so different and at first they don’t seem to be very connected. However, the way that the story is weaved together brings their two stories so close that by the end its impossible to see how they didn’t relate to each other at the start.

The world and its magic system is another aspect of the book that I really enjoyed. The book is set in two primary locations, The Duke’s Forest, which is the place where the storm cloud which haunts the plot of the book is situated, and the City of Kings. Both places and their societies are based around magic. The Duke’s Forest and its people and afraid of magic and the people who wield it, while in the City of Kings there are temples specifically to train mages and improve their magical abilities. I really loved how these two settings worked within the story and also how the storm cloud that hangs over the Duke’s Forest not only informs the settings but is almost a character of its own.

The final thing I really liked in this book was the politics. The politics themselves weren’t overbearing but they did play quite an important role in the whole story. What really impressed me was how the politics were woven into the story, there wasn’t a lot of info. dump moments because Kesia Lupo has managed to make it so that every piece of information you need is intermingled with the plot and the characters and their actions. It made reading this book engrossing and really enjoyable.

WARNING: SPOILERS!

So let’s go back to the characters. Because I have a lot to say about the characters.

Firstly Lena. I think out of the three main characters (Lena, Constance and Emris) Lena was my favourite. She was the outcast in the story, the character who really didn’t understand much about the world she existed in because her life had only ever been one of isolation underground in the Duke’s Forest as a cryptling. I really liked how Lena was a character that was quite often unsure and always questioning. She learnt something on every page I turned and grew and grew as the story went on. I especially liked how she learnt to accept who she was. She went from being afraid of the magic inside her, to not truly understanding what it was or even who she was in the temples, to wanting to get rid of it when she returned to the Duke’s Forest, to finally realising that it was a part of her she couldn’t live without and accepting it for that. Lena felt so genuine to me and so real, I couldn’t help but not fall in love with the scared little cryptling girl who grew two be a kick-butt mage.

Constance was a bit of a wildcard for me. When the story started and we first met Constance I wasn’t really sure about her. She came across to me as a character who didn’t feel very real or fleshed out. We got a lot of backstory about her but she didn’t seem to have any qualities other than feeling entitled to her birthright. It was only as the story progressed that I really started to enjoy reading Constance’s part, and I think a lot of that had to do with many of the revelations about the storm cloud being closely tied to her: her trying to find the source of the storm cloud, her revealing that it was a necromancy spell and finally the reveal that she actually cast it while trying to rip it from Lena’s body. What I really liked about her character was that she completely surprised me in the end. She was coming across at first as the do-gooder woman who just wanted justice for her people and to stop the great evil. I never expected her to be the great evil! Except in the end she wasn’t really. She was really human. When she gave her reasonings for casting the storm and for wanting to claim it again it gave her a sense of humanity that I really liked, even if that stone sank to the bottom when she refused to help Lena bring Emris back to life. Constance turned out to be a lot more complex than she first appeared.

So to talk about Emris I also need to talk about the romance in the story because a lot of my thoughts about him are related to that. After Lena, Emris is definitely my favourite of the three main characters. I loved that Emris was a bit of an enigma, a mystery. He reveals enough about himself to be interesting, but not so much that you know a lot about him. His perspective as someone who had been a rogue and gone through the same things that Lena was a really great way to learn about the temples and the system of magic with the setting of the City of Kings. His mysterious character also meant that I never really knew what to expect from him in each chapter. He kept a lot of things close to his chest and that allowed for some really great world and culture building using Emris’ eyes and his actions. I think what I liked about him most though was his relationship with both Constance and Lena. With Constance the relationship is complicated. He’s gone through a lot with her and because of her. When it turned out that they were both members of the Temple of Mythris a lot of the angst made sense. However, Emris’ relationship with Lena was one that I jumped on board right from the very beginning. I just loved how natural it was! They go from being strangers, to tentatively trusting each other, to what I would call friends. It’s only in the heat of the moment that they both realise that they mean more to each other than that. I also loved that even at the end of the book its not true love. Emris and Lena both make it clear that they are leaving the Duke’s Forest and that this will be a chance for them to live and grow and learn more about each other. It was love, but it was a real kind of love that slowly grows, tentatively changes and requires work.

The Justice was another character in the story that I fell in love with (or loved to hate)! There are really two reasons for this. First I loved his character in general. I loved how misguided and yet completely dedicated he was. He was a fanatic, but he truly believed what he was doing was right. Secondly I liked how he was a kind of misdirection. Both the Justice and Dr Thorn appear to be the bad guys in the beginning. (Of course it becomes apparent quite quickly that Dr Thorn was being used by the Justice for his own gains, and I particularly liked how Kesia Lupo wove the gauntlet into the story to just emphasise that and add another really interesting aspect to the plot.) However, as it turned out, the Justice was the lesser of two evils when put beside Constance and that was an aspect of the plot I really loved. With so many people out for power and themselves and their own gains it was very hard to tell who was the bad guy and who wasn’t.

I was surprised honestly just how many characters there were in this book, especially considering it is a standalone novel. A few of them, particularly the ones I have mentioned, were really great. They drove the story and grew and changed as the book went on. However, there were a few characters that I felt either needed more fleshing out, or needed a smaller part in the story. The two that really stand out for me are Winton and Xander. These two characters in particular seem to play a large part in the story when Constance first returns to the Duke’s Forest. However, as the story progresses their involvement dwindles and almost becomes obsolete. Xander in particular was a bit of a let down for me, he started off really strong, but to me in the end it didn’t feel like he had much purpose.

Magic! I can’t talk about this book without talking about magic and the magic system that Kesia Lupo built. On the surface the system seems quite simple really. People with magic in them are called mages and can use that magic. However, as the novel progressed the system unravelled and became much more complex and that has a lot to do with how the magic system is intermingled and intertwined deeply with the world building.

In the setting of the Duke’s Forest magic is something to be feared, mages something to be hunted. The storm cloud, which the whole book is obviously set around, is literally a cloud that hangs over the heads of the city, oppressing the people and reinforcing the fear of magic and its users. I thought it was really interesting that this was a city plagued by magic that was literally cut off from everywhere else because of the pestilence magic had caused. The isolationism of the city became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. People feared magic, yet magic was causing all the problems in the first place, so people were influenced by the magic, so magic and its users were hunted, so people feared magic. I really liked this perspective and this idea. It’s unusual to find a book that has such a small setting where magic is feared and outlawed and hunted. Starting the story in this setting is also one of the reasons that Lena’s character growth and change is so effective. She starts as the girl hunted for magic she didn’t know, goes to a place where magic is accepted and taught before she has to return to the place that feared her so much they tried to execute her, to use the magic she has to save the city from destruction by magic. Within the setting of the Duke’s Forest, magic is shown to be both good and bad. It is the setting that truly emphasises one of the key rules of the book: chaos is bad, in the wrong hands its worse, magic is only good or bad based on its user.

The magic within the City of Kings was even more interesting. I loved the fight between the traditional temples and their gods that mages bound themselves to, and the ‘mechanical magic’ or Lord Chatham and his followers, and how in the middle of these two were Rogues. I liked the fact that the whole world was built, not just parts of it, every temple was named even if we didn’t see it, every belief of Lord Chatham and his followers explored even if it didn’t have a direct consequence for the story. Having Lena experience the confusion of trying to decide what kind of magic worked for her and not really finding her place in either created a complex situation where magic had to be explored and revealed for Lena to discover who she was. It was another one of those moments where world building, the magic system and character growth were all bound up together incredibly well.

I also really liked how there was a kind of consequence of magic, Chaos. In a lot of stories magic is only bad when used for the wrong reasons, and while Chaos was always described as an evil force that took over and controlled someone’s magic, it was never only reserved for bad people. There were instances where Chaos was involved because of a characters lack of teaching in magic (something Lena is often warned of) or because they were too weak willed to contain it, but so ambitious that they wanted its power. What I really loved though was Lena’s magic and how it related to Chaos. When it is revealed that Lena’s magic is actually the heart of the storm spell it is described at that point as being a kind of Chaos. What Lena’s magic shows is that the magic in this system, the Chaos that destroyed Lord Chatham and some of his followers, is not an unstoppable or uncontrollable force. It is all about strength of will and character, as much as the teaching that mages receive.

The best part of the book for me, after everything had happened, was the climax. The pacing and the plot kept me hooked until the very last page. Constance’s betrayal, Emris’ attempt to banish the storm cloud magic, Lena claiming the magic for herself again but killing Emris in the process, bringing Emris back to life. It all happened so quickly, but it didn’t feel jolty or too fast or too slow. It was pacey and gripping and there were so many ‘no way’ moments that I didn’t know what was going to happen next. The climax of this story was a well-woven, well-executed event that had me reading as fast as I could while also not wanting it to end as every piece of the puzzle slotted together.

The ending of the book itself was unexpected. The only thing I didn’t like about it was how we jumped from the crypts when Lena brings Emris back to life, to a few weeks later when the aftermath of the events was being dealt with. It felt a little jolty to make that jump, but I understand that either the jump was made or the book would have had to end with the storm cloud being dissipated. I did like that there was a sense of resolution. The bones of those executed for using magic were laid with the ancestors, Winton was in charge and Lena and Emris were planning for the future. The jump gave the book a promise for a hopeful future. What I liked most about it though was Constance’s funeral pyre. The moment where Lena acknowledges that she wouldn’t be the person she was without Constance, no matter the bad things Constance did. This moment showed a maturity to Lena’s character that I feel is often lacking in YA books, there is an understanding on Lena’s part that out of every tragedy there is something good, that you cannot remove the bad and expect to be the same person. There is an understanding, as Constance’s body burns, that for Lena to become the person she was to become the person she needed to be, she needed Constance and her ugly agenda. She needed to see the end of Constance’s story so that she could begin her own.

All in all We are Blood and Thunder was a tale of magic, politics and high stakes adventure wrapped up in characters that had me gripped from beginning to end.

Manon van Heumen

Lisa Beasley

I really enjoyed this book. Lena was a delight and Constance was fascinating. The world set up was pretty unique as was the magic system. Loved the twists and turns in the story too and def didnt see them coming. Overall a solid debut from a promising author. 

4.5 stars :)

We Are Blood And Thunder

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