2022 book 131

 Nadeem Jamnia's The Bruising of Qilwa

So I’ll start with a caveat that this book involves blood magic, which gets kind of gross in the second half, and I have issues with blood/bruising making me feel sick, so I really should have put this book down when I realized the titular bruising was literal. I mean, that is probably not an issue for most readers, so take my review with a grain of salt. Anyway, I thought this might have Penric and Desdemona vibes, but not so much. It’s about a non-binary trainee healer and secret blood magic practitioner who, with their family (trans little brother, mother who isn’t in the book at all, weirdly), is fleeing a genocide (I really needed more explanation of the political goings-on because some important discussions toward the end made zero sense), and gets a job working for a healer, and there's a plague, and then they meet a young girl who is also a blood magic user and needs training, and then there’s a different plague, and there are some political tensions, and thoughts about identity. I dunno, there is a lot going on, I think this wouldn’t have totally worked for me even without all the blood splatter. I liked all the sibling relationships, that part was great. But the rest… the writing is kind of awkward. The end is also…a lot. This book made me feel bad on a lot of levels. Like physically and emotionally. B/B-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on Tuesday.