A Fate Inked in Blood (Saga of the Unfated, #1) in Scripted in Fantasy and Fiction

Apr 06, 2024 Shani’s Shelves rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-own

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spice level:🌶️🌶️

Read if you like:
▫️Norse mythology
▫️magic
▫️forced proximity
▫️forbidden love

I really loved this book! I’ve not read a lot of Norse-based mythology, so this was a nice change of pace for me. The magic system seemed well thought out, and I liked the mixture of prophecies, interference from the gods, and the battle between fate and free will.

The plot is fast-paced and filled with adventure, political machinations, alliances, betrayals, and danger. I loved that Dan ...more

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Nov 22, 2024 Olivia rated it it was ok

Freya is the shield maiden—she possesses a drop of a goddess's blood that makes her magic incredibly powerful. It has been foretold that the shield maiden will help unite Skaland, so every king and jarl in the region wants to have Freya under their control. Freya's husband betrays her to their region's jarl, Snorri, to whom she is eventually bound by blood oath. However, Freya also begins to develop feelings for Snorri's son, Bjorn, who is assigned to protect her. As Freya comes into her magic a Freya is the shield maiden—she possesses a drop of a goddess's blood that makes her magic incredibly powerful. It has been foretold that the shield maiden will help unite Skaland, so every king and jarl in the region wants to have Freya under their control. Freya's husband betrays her to their region's jarl, Snorri, to whom she is eventually bound by blood oath. However, Freya also begins to develop feelings for Snorri's son, Bjorn, who is assigned to protect her. As Freya comes into her magic and trains to be a warrior, Freya and Bjorn must survive the enemies seeking control over her power and learn how to take control of their own fates.

Having recently read and loved Danielle L. Jensen's Dark Shores series I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, the aspects of Dark Skies that I enjoyed were lacking in this one and the aspects of Dark Shores that didn't work for me as much were much more prevalent here. To start, I was missing the fantastic world-building of Dark Shores. I couldn't really picture the landscape or get a sense of the different cultures. I also was missing any real character depth. Freya and Bjorn felt pretty flat to me and this made it hard for me to root for them and their relationship. Freya was self-sacrificial to a fault, which ironically did not make her more likable or layered in my mind. Instead, her decisions were either dumb, rash, or felt unrealistic/unrelatable. And then aside from a couple promising side characters that were killed off, the other side characters were just plain evil, selfish, or cowardly.

In Dark Shores I did have some concerns with the author's "telling" rather than "showing" especially with regards to the romance. I had the same complaint here. Freya was lusting after Bjorn for so much of this book (to an almost distracting degree and not in a good way). But we were never really shown why the relationship between these two characters grew beyond that, we were just told that it had (unless the point is that it hadn't, I guess we'll see in book 2).

I imagine some of these differences are because Dark Shores is marketed as a young adult book and A Fate Inked in Blood is a new adult novel. I also think this book follows a lot of the formulas that are quite popular on social media right now, which is not necessarily bad, but just not always my thing. I acknowledge that this is a fun read and maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace for it this week.

The bright spots were the norse mythology, Danielle L. Jensen's writing in general, and the ending. There some twists near the end, both anticipated and unanticipated, that were promising and may end up revealing some character nuance. These aspects intrigued me enough that I'd probably read the next book if I came upon it. ...more

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