By Meghan Mazzaferro
Content warning: racism, violence, forced institutionalization, rape (off page), slavery, sexism, death of a parent, animal cruelty
Bloodmarked is the second book in the Legendborn Cycle, and it follows Bree Matthews as she struggles to deal with the consequences of battle. The Table is awakened, but separated, the Regents are coming, and Bree has to wrestle with the heavy weight of everything she’s learned while preparing for the battle to come. This book starts a few weeks after the first book ends, and it takes Bree to new locations and reveals a much wider world of magic users and monsters.
It’s difficult to talk about a sequel without discussing the events of book one, especially for a book as incredibly written as Legendborn, which weaves together several magic systems and mysteries beautifully, and which tells an incredibly complex and powerful story. I’ll avoid discussing book one in this review, but please know that Legendborn is an absolute masterpiece, and if you haven’t read it yet, you definitely should.
Bloodmarked has very big shoes to fill, and overall, I feel like it is a worthy successor. While I do feel like the pacing is a bit off and there is a lot of exposition and information given in this book, I really appreciate the ways in which the world is expanded. Bree and the other characters are forced to explore not only new locations but new types of magic, and they realize that the laws the Order lives under are not universal. I enjoyed all the new information we got. It feels like the world was expanded, and I’m intrigued by how this opens up future books to a lot more characters and different types of magic.
The characterization in this book is excellent, and Bree is one of the best YA protagonists I’ve ever read. She is strong and powerful while also being vulnerable and emotional, and she feels real and grounded in a way that’s difficult to achieve. This book takes some of the characters from book one and really focuses on them, so we don’t get to spend time with all our favourites from the first book, but I enjoyed each of the characters that were featured, and the book introduced some new characters that I found really interesting to follow as well.
The plot of this book is definitely different from the first one. Where the first story had a lot of mystery components, this book felt much more political, and while I did enjoy the political elements, that tonal change made the book a little hard to get into and connect with at first. I think the biggest criticism I have with this book is that it is so different from the first and that it feels a bit jarring at times, but I think that knowing there is that difference going into the story will improve your reading experience. I really enjoy where the story seems to be going and I was definitely emotionally invested in the political scheming and manipulations that went on.
While I do feel like this book is very exposition-heavy and the pacing was a bit off, every piece of information we got felt necessary and I appreciate the time that was taken to develop this world. Lots of character work and foreshadowing sets the stage for something that I’m confident will be explosive in book three. Overall, the Legendborn Cycle is, in my opinion, one of the best series coming out in YA at the moment, and the second book cannot be missed.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is not the finished copy of the book, and the final copy may be slightly changed.