• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
FanFiAddict

FanFiAddict

A gaggle of nerds talking about Fantasy, Science Fiction, and everything in-between. They also occasionally write reviews about said books. 2x Stabby Award-Nominated and home to the Stabby Award-Winning TBRCon.

  • Home
  • About
    • Reviewers
    • Review Policy
    • Contact
  • Blog
    • Guest Posts
    • Lists
    • Neurodivergence in Fiction
    • Why You Should Read…
  • Reviews
    • Children’s / Middle Grade Books
    • Comics/Graphic Novels
    • Fantasy
      • Alt History
      • Coming of Age
      • Debut
      • Epic Fantasy
      • Fairy Tales
      • Grimdark
      • Heroic Fantasy
      • LitRPG
      • Paranormal Fantasy
      • Romantic Fantasy
      • Steampunk
      • Superheroes
      • Sword and Sorcery
      • Urban Fantasy
    • Historical Fiction
    • Horror
      • Debut
      • Demons
      • Ghosts
      • Gothic
      • Lovecraftian
      • Monsters
      • Occult
      • Psychological
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves
      • Witches
      • Zombies
    • Science Fiction
      • Aliens
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Alt History
      • Cyberpunk
      • Debut
      • Dystopian
      • Hard SciFi
      • Mechs/Robots
      • Military SF
      • Space Opera
      • Steampunk
      • Time Travel
    • Thriller
  • Interviews
    • Book Tube
    • Authorly Writing Advice
  • SFF Addicts Podcast
    • SFF Addicts Clips
    • SFF Addicts (Episode Archive)
  • TBRCon
    • TBRCon2022
    • TBRCon2023

Review: Blood of the Chosen (Burningblade & Silvereye #2) by Django Wexler

November 1, 2021 by Mada Leave a Comment

Rating: 8/10

Synopsis:

Standing on opposite sides of a looming civil war, two siblings discover that not even ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.

Four hundred years ago, a cataclysmic war cracked the world open and exterminated the Elder races. Amid the ashes, their human inheritor, the Dawn Republic, stands guard over lands littered with eldritch relics and cursed by plaguespawn outbreaks. But a new conflict is looming and brother and sister Maya and Gyre have found themselves on opposite sides.

At the age of five, Maya was taken by the Twilight Order and trained to be a centarch, wielding forbidden arcana to enforce the Dawn Republic’s rule. On that day, her brother, Gyre, swore to destroy the Order that stole his sister… whatever the cost.

Twelve years later, brother and sister are two very different people: she is Burningblade, the Twilight Order’s brightest prodigy; he is Silvereye, thief, bandit, revolutionary. 

Review:

Blood of the Chosen is a solid sequel to the first book and impresses itself upon the reader in spades of rip-roaring action, infallible characters and humour that fits perfectly with the theme this book is going for. It is a triage of politics, bickering, chosen, corrupted, arcana, and much more. If anything the characters of Gyre and Maya drive the story often forward, at the expense of sacrificing some parts of the worldbuilding which is in my opinion, a good thing. The prose is good in many areas, but sometimes I felt the pacing was a bit slow. Some scenes could have been shortened to quicken up the pacing around some parts of the novel.

In a nutshell, without spoiling too much, one sibling fights to destroy the Twilight Order, and the other fights to preserve it. Add in a bunch of rebels, add in people trying to form their own splinter Kingdom, add in Barons and rebels such as the Greens, the Whites that can’t agree with each other on anything. I have to say that the action scenes are really well written in this book that resembles something out of a Hollywood movie if they made fantasy dungeons and dragon movies. That being said, sometimes I did feel there were some emphasis on characters’ gestures more than their feelings in some regards. As an example, I often felt Gyre was handled unfairly by the women in his life. He needs a real woman that’ll love him and bring him solace to his broken heart. He has the makings of a very potential leader.

This story has a ton of drama, a ton of political conflicts that would be too hard to summarise in one go. All I know is that you have to read the first book in order to understand the events of the second. It is, a very well written book, and many characters such as Maya and Beq get more scene time which allows us to explore their relationship well enough. This added a lot of character to the story and I liked Elariel’s descent into humanity. This is a sequel that triumphs on all fronts. It’s a solid 8/10 from me on this one. I cannot wait to read book 3 and thank you to the Head of Zeus for providing me with a copy. I can’t wait to read book 3!

Filed Under: Action Fantasy, Adventure Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews Tagged With: Chosen, Django, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, HeadofZeus

About Mada

Mada, the Medjay of Faiyum, is a book reviewer of fantasy and sci-fi, mostly fantasy and historical fiction, and passionate about video gaming, a fan of franchises such as Paradox, Total War, Assassin Creed.

Other Reviews You Might Like

Review: The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler

Team Review: The Given Day by Dennis Lehane ft. Krystle Matar & C.M. Caplan

Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Sponsored By

Use Discount Code FANFI For 5% Off!

Follow FanFi!

Sign up for updates and get FREE stories from Michael R. Fletcher and Richard Ford!

What Would You Like To See?(Required)
Please select the type of content you want to receive from FanFi Addict. You can even mix and match if you want!

FFA Recommends

Get This Book
Get This Book
Get This Book
Get This Book

Recent Reviews

Recent Comments

  1. James on Review: Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1) by Steven EriksonMarch 25, 2023
  2. Adrian M. Gibson on Author Roundtable: Indie Marketing (with Kian N. Ardalan, Ryan Cahill, Aparna Verma & Gourav Mohanty)March 23, 2023
  3. zidane on Review: A Fractured Infinity by Nathan TavaresMarch 14, 2023
  4. Gary Weston on Bender’s Top 10 Fights in Fantasy BooksMarch 14, 2023
  5. David S on My Top 15 Favorite Male Anime Protagonists (So Far)March 13, 2023

Archive

Copyright © 2023 · Powered by ModFarm Sites · Log In