In the first in a new series, Amanda Foody shows the length that families will go to in order to retain the power of High Magic:
When the Blood Moon rises, it signals the fall of the veil and a tournament to the death begins. Seven families enter the tournament but only one can be the victor. The winner of the tournament grants their family access to the High Magic the most secret and powerful resource in the world. But this year is different, the tournament used to be done in secret but a new tell all book has been published and people have come to gawk, criticized and speculate who will wind. The whole world is watching and more than one of the contenders want to rewrite their typical family story.
This is the first book that I have read by Foody and I was not sure what to expect as I had never heard of her as an author, and was fully picked up this book for the cover and the book description. And I will say that I really enjoyed this book, it was much darker than I expected it to be and there were some twists early on that I did not see coming. It has been said that it is like the Hunger Games but with Magic and yes on a surface level this is true for the overall concept, but other than the competition to the death, I did not find them that similar than that. I think that Foody did a great job of separating herself from the Hunger Games comparison with the world building she has done at the beginning of the book, and having it take place in our modern time.
I was lucky enough to get and ARC audio version of the book and wow was this book ever enhanced because of it. I felt like narrator were able to capture the feelings, that you became more invested, or disliked them even more. This is a book that I would 100% recommend that you read the audiobook version of it, you will not be disappointed with it.
There are 4 main character that Foody attempts to develop in this book and for the most part she succeed on a very surface level for most of them. We know each of the 4 characters wants, needs and why winning the tournament means so much to them. I think the character that is developed the best is Alistair Lowe (or also known as The Lowe) as everything does seem to revolve a lot around him, as his family currently has the High Magic. Also there was just something about Alistair that drew me to him as a character, than the other ones.
I think the one thing that bothered me about the book is that all the villains are not really villainous throughout the book. Many of the characters just put up a front of how they believe they are supposed to act. Do not get me wrong there are some villainous acts that occur, I just thought there would be more, given the title and the nature of the plot of this book
Foody is off to an amazing start in this series. I was really impressed with the darkness of the book and developing four main characters fairly well. I look forward to reading the second book in this series, and I know I'll be looking for the audiobook version as it was simply awesome was to read this book.
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