At long last, I’ve managed to find and read a copy of Blood Heir! I’ve been wanting to read this ever since I heard about the kerfuffle on Book Twitter but was also kind of daunted because what if it doesn’t live up to expectations? But overall, this was an intense debut that left me wanting more.

Blood Heir is set in the fictional Cyrilian Empire where Crown Princess Anastacya (Ana) has been framed for the murder of her father. A Blood Affinite able to manipulate the blood within people, her power trapped her in the palace. Now, part of the hunted and oppressed group of Affinites, she must team up with crime lord Ransom Quicktongue to find her father’s killer and clear her name.

First off, I really liked the Russia-inspired universe because I’ve been missing Russian-inspired worlds since the Winternight Trilogy. It doesn’t quite reach the levels of the Winternight Trilogy (there are some issues with naming, apparently) but I appreciated the effort.

Second, I thought Ana was a great protagonist. She reminds me of a bloodthirsty Elsa and I think having her be an Affinite was a good move. It made her part of the oppressed class even though she was born into the ultimate privilege and I think her experiencing this personally made the book more powerful.

That said, I am not too enthusiastic about the relationship between Ana and Ransom Quicksilver. I kind of expected them to fall in love from the get go, given genre tropes, but it never felt convincing. Ransom is supposed to be this cynical crime lord who takes advantage of everyone but he fell for Ana pretty fast. Luckily, Ana didn’t do the same until the end of the book which balanced things out for me.

Additionally, I found the book to veer towards moralistic at times. I don’t know if it’s the influence of the Twitter drama or if it’s because I read the book with knowledge of the drama, but I found some of Ana’s musings to be very obvious. Things about corruption, oppression, etc. For example, Ana has just come out of a fight where she felt as though she had to act against her own principles. She thinks:

“She’d threatened to kill innocent people. She’d tortured a man.

“I did it to save May, she told herself.

But perhaps all monsters were heroes in their own eyes.”

And then the chapter ends. I took this example from the front third of the book but it happens a few times throughout. I tend to agree with what Ana says (for example, that the villains are the heroes of their stories) but it just feels very heavy-handed. Again, it might be the knowledge of the drama and her decision to revise, but it detracted from the book a little.

Overall, however, this was a great debut. It was fast-paced and set in an intriguing world with characters that I could get behind. I’m definitely going to be reading Book Two when it comes out. I also didn’t see any racism or anti-blackness that people have accused the author of committing, whether here or in what I’ve read in the drama, but then again, I’m an Asian reader who doesn’t think the world revolves around America’s experiences with race.