Monday, May 29, 2023

Bloodtraitor by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Bloodtraitor (The Maeve’ra, #3)
An Apparently Spoilery Review
Originally Posted to GoodReads: May 30, 2016


THERE ARE POSSIBLY SPOILERS HERE. I DON'T REALLY CONSIDER THEM SPOILERS, BUT I'VE BEEN KNOWN TO BE WRONG. SO THERE'S YOUR WARNING.

So... I'm not sure exactly how to feel about Bloodtraitor. On the one hand, I liked the flashbacks/visions, I enjoyed the meetings setting up the fall of Midnight, I enjoyed the short references to the future of Nyeusigrube, and I liked the completely random glimpses of life outside of Midnight proper. On the other hand... Malachi was every inch the "second generation slave" he kept talking about, despite very few actions to the contrary. He was a blank slate who pretty much got shoved from one place to another so that the more major players in this little war could talk to each other. I would honestly have had a better time reading this story from someone else's point of view.

I've also come to the conclusion that The Maeve'ra Trilogy seriously suffers from being a prequel to everything but The Keisha'ra Series. The big players in those books put in appearances here but there's no tension because we all know they go on to all but star in other stories. Hell, no one even gets injured aside from the slave characters we don't even meet or care about... and the ever-boring Malachi. I honestly think there should have been a break in the first-person narrative style here to include, instead, a third-person omniscient narrative... or something. First-person just did not do this book, or perhaps even this trilogy, any favors.

I won't likely be rereading The Maeve'ra Trilogy any time soon.

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