Review: Bloodwitch by Timandra Whitecastle

A novella in the world of the Living Blade? Fuck yes I’m gonna read it. You just try and stop me.

I wasn’t even expecting this one either! Unexpected novellas in one of your favorite series are the best novellas!

I got an advance reader copy of this book, and here is my honest review of it!

They say blood is thicker than water. They’re wrong.

An ancient priesthood recruited Jan from the parlours of Babuk. They said it was because she had talent at waterwielding.

They’ll live to regret it.

Jan survived something she shouldn’t have. But she doesn’t remember it clearly. Now they pry into her mind, and she cannot stop them.

Yet.

Jan must learn how to control her own waterwielding gift, to defend herself from those who would reach within her and steal her very name and memories, and she must make a choice …

Who is she, really?

Acolyte

Watermage

Bloodwitch

She stared into the swirling silver and a dark pattern emerged. Everything is always a test.

Fuck.

This was a great couple hours of reading. I love the Living Blade series, and so I was super excited to receive an advance copy.

This is the story of a fifteen year old girl, known as Jan to her friends. Jan is living two lives. In one life, she is Jan, the hustler. She stands on her corner at her table and she invites the passersby to guess which cup hides the figure of the queen. She’s very good at what she does, and both she and the gutter rats make a living.

In her other life, she is Julandra Seacrest, the orphaned heiress to a merchant house in Babuk. The most eligible woman in the city. Her parents died at sea, and she was raised by her aunt and uncle, very wealthy people with no children of their own.

One day, after a day of plying her trade on her corner in the canals, she finds her way home, where her aunt is having a party. In attendance are many of her suitors, but also a strange man she had hustled just a few hours earlier. One that somehow tricked her into letting him win. She would never have let him win.

We soon find out that the stranger is a scout for a group of people known to have power over water, just like Jan does. She gets recruited into this group and travels to their home base, an island where they are trained as priests and priestesses of the goddess of water.

But there is far, far more than meets the eye to these priests and priestesses. They have powers, yes, but Jan is starting to wonder more and more whether they use them for good…. or for not so good.

I really liked this one! I was enthralled from beginning to end, so I spent a good hour and a half snuggled in my chair reading. This has happened with both books in the Living Blade series that I’ve read as well. I think there might just be something about Tim’s presentation. Jan is, very like Nora, a foul mouthed and snarky gal, and I see a lot of myself in that. Jan will refuse to do something that is obviously stupid and say ‘no, fuck you’ if pressed, and that ends up with me mentally throwing a ‘yeah, fuck you!’ in spirit right behind her.

This one had plenty of surprises for such a short book, and for the first little bit of it I wondered what exact connection this story had to the Living Blade series. There are places and people and creatures unlike any that I’ve heard about in the series thusfar. But then, around the middle of the story, you find out. By the end, you *really* find out.

Very exciting little story with just… a fucking bonkers pretty cover. The covers of this series never cease to amaze.