Book Review~King's Blood

Publisher's Description

Jill Williamson's Fantasy Saga Continues!
In the second volume of Jill Williamson's Kinsman Chronicles, a remnant has escaped the destruction of the Five Realms and now lives on several hundred ships adrift at sea. As a flock, they sail north into the unknown in hopes of finding land that might become their new home.

As the king's illness worsens, Sâr Wilek takes authority over the expedition and struggles to rule the disjointed people, while assassination attempts, vicious serpents, and dark magic endanger his life.

One prophecy has come to pass, but another looms dauntingly in the future. Who is this Deliverer? And if the Magonians have him, what might that mean for the realm of Armania?

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I did it again.  I got a second book in a series and have not read the first.  But this time I did do it deliberately.  You see, I thought I would get the first book and read it before the second one came in, but no.  I didn't.  And I thought o well, I have read seconds even a third book in a series and it was alright.  Wrong.  This book is huge!  In fact, it is three separate eBooks put into one big book.  Anyways, onto the review...

I would definitely recommend if this book sparks your interest, read the first one!  It is quiet difficult when they talk about things that happened in the first book and you have no idea what is going on.  There are also a LOT of characters!  Thankfully, at the beginning of the book there is a list of characters names, but sometimes I couldn't find the name I was looking for.  I did like the writing style.  There is a lot of magic in it since it is a "fantasy" book.

There are many gods, although the true He who Created the World is Arman.  Which I liked.  What I didn't like was that there are these, how shall I put this?  They are like in my opinion, demons, but they are called shadir.  And they can be bonded with a human, and when this happens the human is now a mantic.  The human can use this drug called evenroot and have magical powers.

Also, the human, now a mantic when bonded with a shadir not only has magical powers with the evenroot, but also the shadir can help heal their human.  I don't think Satan, called Gazer in the book, wants people to be healed.  God wants healing and Satan wants the opposite of God every time. So, I didn't like that. 

Now, I don't mind a little magic, but a lot is not my cup of tea.  I also don't like that there are all these demons and you hear nothing about angels.  I would have liked there being some angels that protect the people who believe in Arman or those who are starting to and what not.  The shadir (demons) can also whisper into peoples ears and encourage them to do something they should not do.  Now, if there were some angels, then they could help encourage the human not to do said thing.  Yah feel me?  Although, I did read that Onika, Arman's Prophetess, has a shadir with her, so I'm assuming that's an angel?

There is also lots of immorality.  Of course, the author was doing that for ancient Israel when the people turned against God time and time again.  Serving many gods and sacrificing to them(including sacrificing people).  They could have as many wives as they wanted and concubines.  And all of this is in the book.  Of course, in the first book there were the five Woes and that destroyed everything because it was Arman's (God's) Judgement.  Luckily, the prophetess, Onika who is a servant of Arman warned the people so quite a few could escape.  But now they are all stuck on boats sailing to an island (I will stop there least I spoil).

I enjoyed the different characters.  I thought the author did a great job giving them all different personalities.  Like I said, there are a bunch of characters and I found myself frequently looking up names.

Overall, I enjoyed the upbeat rhythm of the book.  I prefer faster paced books and this one did pretty well.  I enjoyed the different characters and there different struggles that each faced.  I didn't care for all the magic in it.  There was a lot of it and not having read the first book made things even more confusing.  Although I did get a lot of it, but there still were things I wasn't so sure about.  I grew attached to characters and that ending...I'm definitely curious for the third book.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

* I received this book from Bethany House in exchange for my honest review.