Page count: 162 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Mala, sent on a quest by the goddess Vela, comes to Blackmoor to locate and tam the legendary Beast. She initially believes the beast to be a demonically possessed mammoth that plagues the area and is surprised when she instead discovers that it is the warrior Tavik, who she first met protecting a caravan of refugees from blood-thirsty revenants.
Tavik is pretty much a broken man, who once foolishly defiled a temple of Vela and now believes that everything that happened since then is divine punishment. The goddess told him when the woman in red shows up, the end will be near. He has already had vivid dreams about Mala for several years and isn't entirely sure he isn't hallucinating when he first sees her. When he hears that Vela has ordered her to tame him, he is despondent, but he hadn't counted on what Mala considers taming to be.
Maddek, the hero of A Heart of Blood and Wishes is cold, angry, and bull-headed, taking far too long to see what a precious gift he has in Yvenne. Tavik knows what a remarkable woman Mala is before they ever meet in person, as he's seen her in his dreams for years. He wanted to return to his home in Blackmoor with an army to kill the sorcerous warlord who ruled there and was instead captured, humiliated, and repeatedly raped and assaulted. When Mala approaches him after visiting the warlord, claiming she has been tasked with taming him, he cannot bear the thought. Instead, he discovers that Mala has no problem showing him both vulnerability and submission, in order to earn his trust.
As a result, I liked this novella (which is technically a prequel to the whole series, first published in the Night Shift anthology and only published separately by Ms. Vane this summer) a lot more. In the first novel, I loved the world-building and pretty much everyone BUT Maddek (although even when I wanted him to snap out of it, I also understood the reasons for his rage and alpha idiocy). Here Mala and Tavik are equally compelling protagonists.
We get to see a different part of the large pre-historic world that Vane has created here. It's a harsh and brutal world, still reeling from the damages when the Big Bad, Anumith the Destroyer, swept the continent with his armies and left ruined cities and deeply scarred people in his wake. The warlord who rules in Blackmoor uses the same weapons as Anumith to subjugate the people he rules, and he clearly needs to be stopped. We also get a clearer impression of the goddess Vela and what might happen if those devoted to her quests fail to complete them (don't worry, all ends well, this is a romance, after all).
I can see why the author chose a different pseudonym when writing these, they're very different from her previous novels as Meljean Brook, yet just as compelling. I'm excited to end the year reading the next full novel in the series.
Judging a book by its cover: I genuinely don't know whether to roll my eyes or applaud these book covers. The barbarians are clearly dressed in random pieces of costuming in a modern photo studio. Still, they give the reader an idea of what the book is about, and isn't that the main purpose of a book cover?
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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