Blood Scion

Author: Deborah Falaye

Series: Blood Scion #1

Publisher: Harper Teen

Release Date: March 8, 2022

An interesting debut that was brutal, bloody and full of action and complex characters.

Sloane lives with her grandfather after her mother disappeared. She has a deep secret inside that if revealed would be the end of her. She is a Scion, a descendant of the ancient Orisha gods. If her emotions run high, she can incinerate her enemies; so, keeping her powers hidden has kept her alive while the Lucis’, those that rule the country, hunt the scions down and kill them. On her fifteenth birthday, Sloan is drafted into the Lucis’ army and uses this as a way to get on the inside and destroy them from within before they hurt anyone else she cares about.

Blood Scion is one of those unique books that was a bit of a slow start with the world building but once it got me, I didn’t want to put the book down. This was definitely a dark book at times and not one for a young audience; even though it is marketed as a YA book I would keep this to the older teen market as much as possible with some of the more mature themes. Sloane is an interesting character and developed really well throughout the course of the book. I would love to see more from her in future novels in the series, so I got really excited when I found out this is a duology. The story does wrap up nicely at the end but is left open for more to come when the author decides to expand on this storyline. There were several characters that played smaller roles that I would like to see expansion on their character arc, each of these minor characters really helped pull the story together. While the premise overall was unique to me I did notice hints of other stories throughout, especially the Divergent series, just minor moments here and there that made me think of the other series. Overall, I would recommend this to older teen readers that enjoy a good fantasy read that has lots of action and adventure.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher.  The views and opinions expressed within are my own.