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Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1; World of Kate Daniels, #15)

Ilona Andrews

Start date: February 1, 2021

Finish date: February 28, 2021

Discussion: Book of the Month

Why we're reading this: Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in January 2021" February BOM…more
[close] Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in January 2021" February BOM

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What Members Thought

Jan 18, 2021 Monadh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: magic, action, pnr, uf, shifter-romance, series, mystery

Mysterious, magical, mesmerizing

When approaching a review I always try to think of how to best convey the feelings the book engendered in me and combine that with pertinent information about the story without being spoilery. Especially with books that I love as much as this one (as books that you love are notoriously more difficult to review than the ones were you found many things to criticize) I struggle with putting my impressions into words without resorting to empty industry platitudes.

I ha Mysterious, magical, mesmerizing

When approaching a review I always try to think of how to best convey the feelings the book engendered in me and combine that with pertinent information about the story without being spoilery. Especially with books that I love as much as this one (as books that you love are notoriously more difficult to review than the ones were you found many things to criticize) I struggle with putting my impressions into words without resorting to empty industry platitudes.

I have read (and loved) everything the author couple behind Ilona Andrews have ever written and I am also a faithful follower of their blog, where I also read their free online stories (The Innkeeper Chronicles) from the beginning as they were posted. So when they started to post Julie’s story (Ryder), I was all in. Initially they had written the first segment as a thank-you to fans of KD back in May 2020, but by popular demand continued it thru September, when they out of the blue not only stopped the roughly weekly schedule of posting, but also took down all the existing chapters, announcing that they were editing and finishing the book and that it was set to be released on January 12th, 2021. Now, of course we as readers don’t have a right to a free story, and Ilona Andrews can post on or take down from their website whatever they want; still, I feel this could have been handled better. I was not primarily upset that I now wouldn’t get my weekly story fix or that the final book would substantially differ from the online version, but by Ilona Andrews telling her readers to just forget everything they had written so far. I understand that books go thru a rigorous editing process that sometimes includes cutting, rearranging or even re-writing big parts of it; I don’t mind that, but her dismissive statement just to forget what they had written so far really rubbed me the wrong way; because obviously readers are not going to do that, even if they could (that’s not how memory works).
Since I had fully planned on buying the book once it came out, I didn’t save the individual chapters to my computer, so I can only remark on the changes from memory. Normally, I might have registered the differences vis-a-vis the online version without putting too much significance on them (just considering them part of the normal editing process), but since Ilona made such a big deal out if it, this whole "changes discussion" was perversely stuck in the back of my mind while reading the book. Overall I didn’t feel that the trajectory of the book was substantially changed. It seemed that much more details about Julie’s/Aurelia’s background was strewn in throughout the earlier chapters. Another thing that I noticed was that parts of the story seemed to have been re-arranged, so cut out in chunk and put in earlier or later in the timeline. And if my memory is not playing tricks on me I thought that the first meeting between Aurelia’s two would-be suitors was slightly defused…

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, we can delve into the book proper. Although this is billed book 1 of the Kate Daniels World/Aurelia Ryder, this is not the book to start if you are new to Ilona Andrews’ writing. In order to really appreciate Julie and her various entanglements with all the other characters, you should probably read at least all the 10 books of the Kate Daniel series as well as Iron and Magic (part 1 of uncle "Hugh’s" story) and the novella Magic Stars (sort of a YA story featuring a young Julie and a scarred Derek on one of their early adventures).
At the end of Magic Triumphs (KD 10) we see Julie riding off into an unknown future with her "grand-mother" Erra, as she strongly feels she has to make a life for herself independent of her adoptive mother Kate and the whole family, though she remains in contact with them. Now, 8 years later she is back in Atlanta, not only unrecognizably changed on the outside, but also having mastered strong blood magic. But nobody can know who she is. A witch friend of hers had a vision in which she foresaw the death of Kate and everybody Julie loved if they found out that Julie was back in Atlanta. At the same time, the only clue to how to fight this evil is connected to the murder of a local pastor in Atlanta, so Julie, now Aurelia Ryder inserts herself into the investigation. But the further Aurelia unravels the mystery of the murder, the more difficult it gets to avoid all the people from her former life, especially as she is far from the only one interested in that murder…

Ilona Andrews have really outdone themselves with this book: it was mysterious, magical, mesmerizing. They understand to capture the reader’s attention from the first to last page by skillfully maintaining the arc of suspense while we follow Aurelia unravel the mystery. Throw in the bittersweet possibility of a re-awakened romance that never had the chance to bloom in the first place. And a capable and kick-ass heroine who not only manages to out-maneuver assorted bad guys but also runs rings around her two would-be suitors (at least one of them). Oh no, I’m just realizing my synopsis now sounds like your typical YA fantasy with the requisite romantic triangle, but it really isn’t. For one, the heroine, despite her young age, is much too mature and aware of her responsibilites, so she always thinks and weighs her options before she acts, and for another there really is just one guy who is in the running, and her actions are explicitly not dictated by the way she still feels – has always felt – about him, at least, mostly.

Sometimes it’s difficult to lay one’s finger on why exactly one likes a book so much that one wishes to possess a magic wand (or a memory eraser) to be able to wipe one’s mind so that one could read a certain book for the first time again, but for me one of the reasons is the cinematographic quality of the Andrews’ writing. Especially their battle/fight scenes are written in a way that they play out like a movie in my mind. In an article about the cross-pollination of film and fiction I read the following quote: “if you use the cinematic viewpoint, you can kiss [interiority] goodbye”, which of course is garbage, as Andrews narrative strength lies precisely in combining the two, as the story is told from first person point of view, so we do get both, Julie’s/Aurelia’s interior landscape while she experiences those fights in film-like sequences. I think one of the "tricks" is that the authors have Julie describing the fights in a rather detached, matter-of-fact way, even as we as readers are aware that she is seething inwardly, but Julie knows that to get distracted by emotions is a sure way to get dead.

Intertwined with that is the sense of place, and I don’t mean long tedious descriptive passages, but how the story is propelled by Julie’s movement thru space, the way her quest to solve the mystery has her passing the landmarks of Atlanta. I don’t live in Atlanta, or even the US, so I can’t rightly judge how accurate those place descriptions are, but for me it is more that with this post-apocalyptic urban landscape they evoke feelings of both familiarity and strangeness (the parts that have been warped by magic). Freud used the term "heimlich" to describe this feeling, as in German it not only means «uncanny», but thru its root «heim» (home) also carries the older, nowadays mostly obsolete, meaning of "homely/homey".

Some reviews have remarked on the open-ended nature of the book, that it raises more questions than it gives answers. Frankly, I was not bothered by that as I assume there will be more books in the Kate Daniels World. Blood Heir does not end on a cliffhanger, but even as the evil magical entity has been dealt a crippling blow, it is far from vanquished, and the issue that brought Julie to Atlanta is far from resolved.
If I would criticize anything, then it is the fact that I got the strong impression that there is actually part of the backstory missing. Julie several times references her (close) relationship and past interactions with "uncle" Hugh, which haven’t happened in Hugh’s timeline yet (since Iron and Magic took place before the last KD book). In a post in Spring 2020 Ilona Andrews announced that they were postponing writing Iron Covenant 2, as it was going to be a very dark book – with one of important characters dying – and because of personal circumstances and the pandemic they weren’t really in the right frame of mind to tackle such a dark book. I mention this for two reasons: first, I wouldn’t really describe Blood Heir as light fare (which makes me wonder how dark Hugh’s second book is going to be), and second, as Hugh is obviously still alive at the time of Julie’s story, my brain is now rotating frantically trying to figure out who might get killed off… Seriously, I CAN’T WAIT for the next book! ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 12, 2021 Sandra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, witch-magic-fae, fantasy, own, shifters, pnr-uf, vampires, ilona-andrews, fav-authors

Loved it! Lots of entertainment and lots people we know & love.

Don't want to say much as everything that's on my mind would be too spoilery :D ...more

1 like · Like · see review