Julia Whicker

Wonderblood has one of the darkest and more fascinating world building structures I've ever seen in a dystopia. It's dark and bloody and creepy. A religion has sprouted over the idea of the space shuttles and that they will come back to Earth and rescue everyone, and there will be a new day dawning, one of Hope and Mercy. The setting and the Carnivals and the astronomical focus of the government at Cape Canaveral is fascinating.

No, scratch that. It is so freaking dark and show more amazing.

Unfortunately, that is where the amazingness of Wonderblood ends. The story is told from three points of view as mysterious, unplotted lights appear in the sky. Are they comets? Are they meteors? Are they the shuttles? Spoken in turns between Aurora who is thought to be a sigil of the end of this world, John the court astronomer, and Mavel the Heirophant, the reader watches as Cape Canaveral slowly disintegrates as various people lay out their cards and act out their beliefs upon the lights.

Aurora is a child bride, more or less raped, and branded at various points in the story. John can't make up his mind about what he wants. Marvel meant to kill someone but didn't and now wants to go back and finish the job. While I didn't care for any of the narrators, Marvel's whole storyline is chaos, because as far as I could tell, it wasn't at all relevant to the story.

There are decent characters in the sidelines - I wanted to learn more about the Green Butterfly and more about Queen Allyson. Orchid had potential, but it was squandered on hero worship of her husband. Tygo would have been a decent unreliable narrator, but he is instead in the stands and thrown about to further John and Marvel's plots.

Most frustrating of all, we wait the entire book for this build up of a war, and to find out what the lights in the sky were... and then the book ends abruptly in the middle of everything. I am so, so frustrated.

I really, really, really loved this world. Honestly, I did. I was fascinated by the religion that grew around distant memories of space exploration, and the execution carnivals, and the blood rain. I wanted more of that. I wanted to see a really incredible story in this world. I think Julia Whicker has a fabulous imagination and a real knack for world building, but the storytelling just wasn't there. show less

I mentioned in my last wrap-up how my appetite for weird books continues to grow. This book taught me that maybe there is such a thing as too weird.

“Wonderblood” started off strong – set 500 years into the future when most of the world’s population has been wiped out by a strange Mad Cow-type of disease. Cult-like religious sects practice astrology and other superstitious divinations. Oh and beheadings. Lots and lots of beheadings. This is a bloody, strange little book set in Cape show more Canaveral, FL (what?). I really wanted to like this and for the first 60% or so of this book, I did. But I think the author ran out of steam and couldn’t fully realize where she wanted her characters to go and why. The story felt like I was constantly climbing uphill without ever cresting it.

There’s a lot to discuss about this book (i.e. parallels to modern religion, destiny, violence) and there’s a lot of niggling details that poke holes in the story (i.e. What happened to 21st century tech and literature? What happened to the world outside of the U.S.?). Julia Whicker’s prose is excellent and her writing makes this totally worth reading (if you can stomach the weirdness and the violence) but the ending was pointlessly ambiguous and disappointing. show less

Rich conceptual material and a fascinating collision of purposes, but from the beginning, the characters were such Mervyn Peake giants that their failure to resolve their predictions did feel inevitable, and yet they were too sympathetic for the reader to be satisfied by the unfinished beginnings and ends of their story arcs. At the other end, the final line is truly amazing, but it was not the conclusion of this world and its people as presented. Excellent atmosphere and word-by-word show more techne; moments of striking insight; but this novel needed something more to connect them.

NB if you find stories about characters like Orchid - or "Aurora" - that you enjoy, recommend them to me. I really love conflicted women blessed/cursed with education, family lore, insight, uncertainty, love, childlessness, and impulsiveness badly crossed with charismatic power. Or, if the author chooses to write another story about an equally fascinating woman, I'll read it. This book just wasn't enough about her.

(Personal aside. I hadn't thought about this phrase in years, so I have no excuse for the pun: my actual words, after noting that the world was good and the last line too, were "But where's the beef?") show less

This book was a bit of a rollercoaster in the reading. I was not exactly wowed in the first few chapters as there were too many unanswered questions in regards to the dystopian world in which the author had created. There were also a number of logistical things and inconsistencies that challenged the believability of this world. I prefer a certain amount of real science in my science fiction.

I made a decision early in to ignore these issues and instead relax and enjoy the reading because one show more thing was for certain, the author is an absolutely excellent wordsmith. The prose flowed so well I contemplated how most readers would not worry over the small details that perplexed me and I decided to join them.

Once I had shed my inhibitions about details and science, I became enrapt in the story. This dystopian world is very dark and very unique. I can't imagine how any fan of the sub-genre dystopian could not find this entertaining.

As I rolled along my opinion of the value of the book kept growing with each chapter. The artwork interspersed throughout the work gave it a bit of a graphic novel feel. You could feel the level of tension rising as you neared the end, and my opinion had risen to near five star rating, but then, boom, it ended in a whimper.

I cannot fathom why the story leaves so many sub-plots unfinished with the exception that the author intends to follow up with a sequel. There is nowhere that indicates this book is part one of a series. As my copy indicates it is not the final product, but a pre-release version, if it is indeed the intent of the author to write a continuation, then I would implore her to identify the book as "Part 1". Without such identification she will alienate readers.

In a final analysis, because of the ending, my opinion dropped below a 4, but I think it is still better than a 3.5, so a 4 star rating is what it is. If it was identified as a Part 1, I probably would have given it 4.5. show less