The Bloodprint

I truly don't have words eloquent enough to do this book justice. AZK said she loved writing it and the power of that love and care shines through like the power of the Claim. The world building is deftly woven into the story itself without large, clunky info-dumps. The writing is beautiful. The characters are well-developed and nuanced. As it is the first of the series, it doesn't resolve anything, and ends with a gut-wrenching cliff hanger. My heart is a lump in my throat. I cannot wait for the next book. It's official-I will read anything AZK writes. She's incredible. She's gives such depth and strength to her characters and her stories. Read this now. I need others to suffer the wait for book two with me.

This is another of those books where I expected to be blown away and ended up with just "yeah, it's nice". We've got a secret society of badass women who gain magical power by reading a sacred book, fight against a misogynistic tyrant, rescue women and children taken by slavers ... sounds like exactly my style. But while actually reading it, I found that the most interesting parts of the plot were overshadowed by the romance and it took me two weeks to read because my interest wasn't really grabbed.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. the Bloodprint is set in a dystopian future where a destructive war of not-quite-Armageddon proportions has apparently destroyed most of the world outside Central Asia and the Middle East; there things have returned to quasi-medieval technology. The people of Khorasan (roughly corresponding to eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia, according to a map in the front matter) are followers of The Claim, a holy book; written versions of The Claim seem to have been mostly lost and it is now transmitted by oral tradition. (A central verse of The Claim is There is no one but the One. And so The One commands, just in case we weren’t sure what holy book The Claim is supposed to show more represent). Similarly places and things in Khorasan are not very thinly disguised actual places and things; the cities of Hira, Candour, Maze Aura, Marakand, Black Aura, and Ashfall are more-or-less Herat, Kandahar, Mazar el-Sherriff, Samarkand, Bokhara, and Isfahan; and the evil cult trying to destroy literacy and subjugate women in the name of their misinterpretation of The Claim is the Talisman. So far, so good.

The protagonist is Arian, a First Oralist of the Companions of Hira, a group of women dedicated to preserving the true message of The Claim. In addition to being an accomplished warrior, Arian has magic powers; she can recite verses of The Claim that stun or kill enemies, destroy buildings, raise fogs, and so forth. Arian finds herself on a quest for the Bloodprint, an ancient written copy of The Claim. She acquires and loses various friends and companions in generic heroic fantasy fashion.

The heroes and heroines are all suitably heroic; the villains are all disgustingly villainous. Arian is adequately conflicted by having the power to kill with the spoken word. Every few dozen pages Arian and friends are captured by miscellaneous baddies, who never kill them outright, instead making the classic Evil Crazy mistake of imprisoning them – usually kinkily gagged and chained - to await hideous tortures (or, in the case of the women and the young boy, the Fate Worse Than Death). Unexpected rescue always shows up, and they always escape. (At the end of this novel things look pretty bad, but I expect once again rescue will come at the start of the next in the series).

As you may guess from the above, I don’t find The Bloodprint very well written. Still, there are some things of interest and attraction here. For one thing, it’s refreshing to find a fantasy novel based on something other than Northern European tradition. Another is the handling of romance; Ausma Zehanat Khan does interesting things with love scenes. There’s nothing even remotely explicit by modern standards; instead there’s description of the genuine erotic frisson that can come from seemingly casual glances and touches in a culture where personal and physical contact between the sexes is more restrained than ours. When the hero and heroine finally get as far as a kiss the narration of the event is actually more exciting than if they were busy with organs and orifices.

So a mixed review; I want to see what happens so I’ll track down the other novels in the series. show less

The Bloodprint is the start to a new epic fantasy series with Middle Eastern cultural influences.

Arian’s homeland has been overtaken by the Talisman, a new organization that promotes an ideology of fear, ignorance, hatred of difference, and misogyny. As Companions of Hira, Arian and her friend Sinna are some of the few who openly fight the Talisman. They’ve spent the last decade traveling Talisman territory and freeing women from slave chains, but their efforts have not been enough to slow the Talisman’s rise. Then the leader of the Companions of Hira gives Arian a new quest: to locate and retrieve the Bloodprint, an ancient text that has the power to defeat the Talisman once and for all.

The heart of the Companions of Hira’s show more power lies in their knowledge of the Claim, the magical words of a sacred scripture. However, I kept wishing that I knew more about the Claim and the religion and magic of the world. For a book where the religion is so central to the plot, we sure don’t know much about it. For instance, who even was Hira? Where did the Companions come from? I’d guess that the author has much of this worked out, but it didn’t come across while I was reading The Bloodprint, which created problems with the world building. Another example would be how the narrative casually mentions about halfway through that the Companions of Hira are supposed to be celibate. This was after we’d already seen at least two Companions of Hira having sex. Why didn’t we find this out earlier?

Structure wise, The Bloodprint is basically a treasure hunt. Treasure hunt plot lines can be a ton of fun, but I generally think they need pretty snappy pacing. The Bloodprint dragged for over the first half and didn’t really pick up until Arian and her friends were beyond the Wall and in the dangerous lands beyond. I also kept feeling like Arian wasn’t driving the plot but was being driven along by it; she kept being manipulated and directed by other characters. Ending on a cliffhanger didn’t help the issues I had with The Bloodprint‘s structure, and it prevented the book from feeling like it had a plot arc of its own. I feel like this is part of a larger manuscript which was cut into pieces to make individual books.

On the topic of structure, I needed for The Bloodprint to have a stronger emotional heart. I would have liked to see more focus on Arian’s relationship to her missing sister (which is a major factor of her character motivation) or with her friend Sinna. Or how is her forming a friendship with Sinna disrupted by the trauma of her missing family? The Bloodprint had a lot of potential for a strong, emotional heart to the story, but I felt like none of them were ever fully developed. The closest it came was with the romance subplot.

I did not like the romance subplot. If you’ve been following my reviews for a while, you’ll know that I’m a hard sell when it comes to romance subplots. Often I’m just indifferent to them, but I hated this one. The love interest was so controlling! And he keeps saying that Arian “betrayed” him but then it turns out her “betrayal” was that she wasn’t willing to give up her position as a Companion of Hira. I was so done with this guy.

But back to the topic of Sinna. I had some concerns about her character. She’s basically Arian’s sidekick and she’s the only black character in the novel. I was sort of worried that she’d fall into the stereotype of black best friend/sidekick and never move beyond that. I wanted her to have her own distinct character arc and a tangible effect on the plot. She had neither. In fact, she disappeared towards the end and Arian didn’t seem to care much? It felt like everyone kind of forgot about her. In addition, this reviewer has some thoughts to add about Sinna’s depiction.

There were also a couple of minor villains who fell into stereotypical tropes. One’s an evil albino, although there’s a couple of other (even more minor) albino characters who aren’t portrayed in a negative light. Another is a man who molests and murders boys. I really hope the idea behind him is that “gay people = child molesters” but with the lack of queer characters, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, it gave me flashbacks to Dune and not in a good way.

One of the most interesting elements about The Bloodprint was how the Talisman had parallels to the Taliban; I don’t think it’s an influence I’ve ever seen in fantasy before. I do love how this story is centered around a female character who’s resisting patriarchal authority, although I did chafe at reading about such a violently patriarchal world where the heroines were under the constant threat of rape and brutalization.

Probably the most frustrating thing about The Bloodprint is that I could see the shape of a truly great fantasy novel within it, but the story wasn’t quite there yet and might have benefited from another round of edits.

I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review. show less

** I received an advance reader copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway. **
(My son read and reviewed this book.)

This book was a fun read that had engaging characters. Arian, the main character, has a very tough enemy to face. This enemy is a religious sect which commands that all people either follow their doctrines or else. The main character goes on a perilous quest to find something that will allow her to fight this sect. She meets and befriends a variety of people along the way. It was great fun following Arian on her journey and watching as she expanded her horizons and met others who may be able to help defeat the evil sect. I definitely plan to continue this series.

I got about halfway through and quit reading. While I thought the concept of the plot was interesting, the characters, and how it was written didn't fulfill the plot's potential.

The Audacy (a task), The All Ways (holy place of fountains), the city of Task End, The Assimilate (interpretation of a holy book), The Immolan (religious leader of Taliban stand-in), The Talisman (Taliban stand-in), the Claim (stand-in for Koran)- the clunky. Combine this with a great deal of pining after beautiful men who are either hostile or sleazy or both, and I am DNFing.