Tag Archives: YA

Book Review: On Wings of Blood, by Briar Boleyn

Over the Summer, I was lucky enough to win a giveaway on Instagram that included a copy of Briar Boleyn‘s On Wings of Blood.

I didn’t sign up for this.

A half-fae in a school of highblood vampires? That’s a recipe for torment.

I’m Medra Pendragon—last of the dragon riders, or so they tell me. Funny thing is, there are no dragons left. Not a single one. But somehow, that hasn’t stopped the vampires from deciding I’m worth capturing. Now I’m stuck at Bloodwing Academy, where the highbloods run everything and blightborn like me? We’re just blood in their veins, pawns in their games.

But that’s not even the worst part. Enter Blake Drakharrow. Cold, arrogant, and way too gorgeous for his own good. He’s been tormenting me since the moment we met, and now, thanks to some ancient ritual, we’re betrothed. He acts like he owns me, but I’m not going down without a fight.

Bloodwing isn’t just a school—it’s a battlefield. Highbloods fight for power, and if you’re weak? You’re dead.

Between deadly competitions, lies that could get me executed, and a dragon-shaped secret looming over my head, all I have to do is survive. Easy, right? Except I’m starting to think the real danger isn’t the academy—it’s what I’m becoming in this twisted game of power.

And Blake? He might just be the one who pushes me over the edge.

They think they can control me. They think they can use me.

But they have no idea what they’ve awakened.

As others have said, this is Violet Sorrengail meets Draco Malfoy. The problem is that I never understood the Draco shippers, and I thought Violet was a milqtoast heroine. Medra is worse, so so much worse though.

She literally (lit.er.a.lly) wakes up in a strange new world without her magic (i.e., defenseless) with no more reaction than one would exhibit if they went to the BP when they meant to go to the Quick Trip. There is basically no reaction or adjustment. And once there, she vacillates between obediently following the dictates set before her and behaving like a rabid chichuachua. She is all bark with nothing to back it up, never acknowledging that the only reason she doesn’t get killed is that the immensely more powerful people choose not to. But the reader is supposed to interpret it as some testament to her abilities. It patently is not. What it reads like instead is so mentally unstable as to be suicidal. More importantly, though, is that it is incredibly dull to watch a girl find herself in a new world and then be assigned to a school, only to dive into her academics with essentially no protest beyond a few complaints.

Then there is the ‘romance.’ I understand the concept of a slow-burn. But this is literally (lit.er.a.lly) a no-burn. He and she snipe at one another for a paragraph or two once every 10 chapters or so, and nothing more. This a romance (even an enemies-to-lovers romance) does not make. They spend almost no time together over 500+ pages. And thank goodness, because I hated the MMC. (I barely tolerated the FMC. But I 100% would be rabid if she were any stupider and actually accepted the man, which she no doubt will in future books, which is why I will not be reading them.)

Lastly, and in combination with the frustration of 500+ pages without a romantic payoff, is that the book literally (lit.er.a.lly) ends where it begins. Talk about feeling like a pointless waste of my time. If you want to go to a million magic classes with a gender bent Harry Potter, knock yourself out.

Maybe true fans of YA will appreciate it. And despite hints of having done something meaningful and seemingly adultish before finding herself in vampire-land, this is definitely a bland, dime-a-dozen YA book (which makes the single sex scene feel out of place). I’m glad to be washing my hands of it.

Other Reviews:

Review: On Wings of Blood: A Dark Academia Fantasy Romance with Dragons & Vampires (Bloodwing Academy Book 1) by Briar Boleyn

Audio Book Review: Magical Intelligence, M.K. Wiseman

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Somewhere on the internet, I came across a freebie Audible code for M.K. Wiseman‘s Magical Intelligence.

When you are a member of Britain’s first team of wizard spies, every mission might be your last. But as the dawning of the 20th century draws ever nearer, magic grows weak. Violectric Dampening, the clash of man-made electricity with the Gifts of magekind, threatens M.I.’s existence. And if that isn’t enough, they’ve now been discharged from their own government. Obsolete. Distrusted.

And now hunted by one of their own.

Myra Wetherby has always feared her so-called fits, strange visions of people and places that she cannot explain. It is the emotional manipulation, however, a strange empathic connection to those around her, which threatens her very sanity. A danger to her family, Myra runs away, falling straight into the hands of the newly ousted Magical Intelligence team. Who just so happen to need an ability like hers.

Which makes Myra one of them…whether she likes it or not.

The description for this book isn’t untrue, but it misdirects. It does not give an accurate impression of the story. Most of it is the history that the story builds on, rather than the story itself, and it more problematically leaves out the fact that the main character, Myra, is 14 years old, which makes this a much different story than one is led to expect by the blurb.

Having said that, nothing about the story actually feels like she is 14 years old. I say that as a parent of a 14-year-old. So, I feel ideally placed to say her young age does not work for the character or the plotline. She does not act 14, no one treats her as if she is 14, and the plot does not lend itself to a 14-year-old. Honestly, several of the other characters are also in their teens, and they don’t act their age either. But it is especially problematic for Myra, as the main character. Plus,14 feels so much younger than 18 in this context. Eighteen might round up to a young adult. 14 rounds down to a child.

Outside that one big glaring problem, I generally liked this. I didn’t love it, but I liked it well enough. However, the pacing is a bit off. Somehow, the beginning dragged on and on, and then the end rushed too fast. Honestly, I felt like I was constantly scrambling, being like, “Wait, who is this again?”

I do feel like this book did a lot of work setting up the series. So, the rest of the series might not suffer from the same pacing problems, which could just be a symptom of first-book syndrome. All in all, it was a middle-of-the-road read for me. Alyson Grauer did a nice job with the narration, however.

Other Reviews:

Blog Tour Book Review: Magical Intelligence – M. K. Wiseman

Book Review: Wake and Fade, by Lisa McMann

Wake:

This was a seriously quick read. I started it after dinner, and by the time I went to bed around 11, I’d finished it and about a 1/3 of Fade (book 2). And to my complete surprise (because I’m sometimes iffy about YA), after a somewhat slow start, I enjoyed it. I liked the almost diary-like setup (part of why it reads so fast) and the main characters. I found the side characters to be pretty clichéd and unexciting. However, the book primarily focuses on the main character, who is a practical sort of girl in a tough situation, and her male counterpart, who is particularly endearing in his caregiving.

Fade:

I thought this was a finely written book, but I didn’t like it anywhere near as much as book one. I suffer from pretty severe rape-fatigue when it comes to rape in the books I read for entertainment and…yeah, I could go the rest of my life without reading one more book centered on men taking advantage of girls. So, the plot was a flop for me. But I can still acknowledge that I like the character and her love interest and appreciate McMann’s YA writing. There, technically, is a 3rd book in the series (and the library probably has it). But I feel like this book stopped at a good place for a break.