The Blood King

by Gail Z. Martin

Reviewed by Coral

Time is running out for Martris Drayke. He still has much to learn about his powers before he can hope to defeat Arontala and stop him resurrecting the Obsidian King. And there’s also the matter of raising an army to remove his brother Jared from the throne.

Can Tris and his friends do the impossible and win the day?

I was hoping that the second book would be more enjoyable than the first since all of the groundwork had already been set up but was disappointed instead.

Considering how often they mention the tight timetable they have to train Tris and raise a rebellion, there’s an awful lot of time spent on non-training and non-rebellion matters. Some of them ended up being used as a means to further Tris’ goals, but that wasn’t their intended purpose so it felt useless to me.

There were some interesting plot points about how this civil war could spiral into a war across the continent as other countries became involved, but a lot of it was dropped without really being explored. I am especially disappointed that the Nargi weren’t fully explored as they were willing to support Jared. But there was also something there that didn’t make any sense, as another country was willing to attack Nargi to distract them, but then wouldn’t that conflict still be waging even if Tris wins the throne? Why would the Nargi simply forget about another country attacking them if Jared loses power? It was all poorly handled.

Jared and Arontala are such one note villains that it is ridiculous. I think I would have liked the story better if Jared was, on the face of it, a good king for his country and only Tris and his friends knew the truth, to create some kind of conflict. But Jared was just such a villain, to everyone in his kingdom, that it made for a boring story.

Given how afraid everyone was that Tris wouldn’t be able to succeed and how much of a longshot this whole plan was, the conclusion felt too easy.

Overall, I found it a boring book that I mainly skimmed through. I won’t be reading the other books in the series or the sequel series.

Grade: C