Legendborn released in 2020 and took the world by storm, packing a punch that nobody foresaw. Everyone who entered the world created by Tracy Deonn for the story, surfaced with an experience. The sequel, Bloodmarked, is everything that Legendborn is, but fifty times over.
Bloodmarked picks up just after Legendborn and the book hits the ground running. The pace is absolutely brutal and readers will reach the halfway point before they are aware of it as the speed and nature of the events unfolding magnify the intensity of every single moment. Every word in this book is crafted efficiently; any inconsequential scene or unnecessary occurrence is edited out or was perhaps not written at all. The book is tight and it remains so, despite the length being 576 pages.
The plot is intricate and layered with the secrets in this book even having secrets of their own and nothing is as it seems. As a reader we tend to categorise authors and their styles in our mind and create general ideas or predictions about how a story will grow and which direction it might bend. These might not even be conscious conclusions we arrive at, but subconscious calculations. None of this works with anything that Deonn writes. Her writing and the book’s plot are in cahoots and they redirect, allure and intrigue the reader to see exactly what they’re supposed to when they’re supposed to.
Deonn does with Bloodmarked what she did with its predecessor with the emotional ingredient in the story. Legendborn was not just about the larger mission that could seem to be the most important aspect of the book. This book, this series, is also about the destiny that Briana Matthews writes for herself. Her journey of understanding her past, the influence it has on her choices in her present and her decisions for the future are all a big part of Bloodmarked. Briana is a young, brave, scared, powerful teenager with a heavy destiny on her shoulders and Deonn does right by her. She upends the narrative to reflect the truth we never thought to exist and those are moments I’ll always remember reading.
Legendborn laid a strong foundation for the worldbuilding and Bloodmarked builds on it, further strengthening the story and deepening the connection the readers have to it. Deonn has clearly planned this out to the last word and her imagination to create this world with all its layered complexities is awe inspiring.
The friendships in Bloodmarked are some of the most heartwarming parts of the book. Friendships forged over decades and those that are lifetimes old all hold a special and sacred place in this story (the extent to which is astounding and emotional). Sel and Nick too have large presences in both, Briana’s life and the book, and revelations about the relationship between the three of them play out before our eyes. For readers who have never been fond of a love triangle, Deonn somehow manages to skate by the typical pitfalls that come with the category. You see past these tropes, past the words, past everything, to the heart of the story.
If as a reader your heart clenched and your tear ducts were jerked at the injustice and racism the protagonist and her friend are subjected to in Legendborn, prepare to be inflamed. This book, just like its predecessor, isn’t here to dull the truth. It’s a knife, sharp to our ribs to truly see the truth of how beautiful differences are perceived in the most abhorrent and unapologetically cruel ways. Deonn reminds you with every word just how deeply racism has sunk into the actions and thoughts of people; so much so that they don’t even perceive it as what it is in themselves and neglect to perceive or recognise it in others as well.
Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn was a 10 for me. Expect betrayal, love, unending adventure, plot twists, sacrifice, magic, chaos, and balance. You should most definitely expect to forget everything you’re expecting because the book is an adventure no one can be ready for.
Bloodmarked is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of
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Synopsis | Goodreads
The shadows have risen, and the line is law.
All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur’s knights—only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new:
A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion.
But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped.
Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won’t let her. To them, she is an unknown girl with unheard-of power, and as the living anchor for the spell that preserves the Legendborn cycle, she must be protected.
When the Regents reveal they will do whatever it takes to hide the war, Bree and her friends must go on the run to rescue Nick themselves. But enemies are everywhere, Bree’s powers are unpredictable and dangerous, and she can’t escape her growing attraction to Selwyn, the mage sworn to protect Nick until death.
If Bree has any hope of saving herself and the people she loves, she must learn to control her powers from the ancestors who wielded them first—without losing herself in the process.
