From Blood and Ash

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know, I’m usually not one to read books that have a very historical feel to them, but as part of book club we decided to dive into this series as a group read. I’m glad I did, because this book clearly set the stage for some good future books. That’s not to say this book was bad, but it had a lot of building to do, which stacked the good stuff at the end.

Poppy is “the maiden,” which is a very rare designation in their society, but involves her wearing a veil to disguise herself and keeping away from most everyone else. She’s still got a friend in her sort-of-servant, but she thrives on adventure, most of which is denied to her. Does that stop her? No. She makes some pretty terrible choices most of the time, but at least her guard has trained her in combat and archery (that comes in later). At the very start of the book we meet Hawk, a new guard assigned to the castle and of course he ends up becoming her guard after one of her others gets killed by assassins.

This whole society was a really intersting spin on your standard paranormal stuff. We have the ruling class, who hides from sunlight after “ascension” and keeps said ascension ceremony secret. They require citizens to send their second and third born children to a temple, never to be seen again. Also, this whole world is hiding and protecting themselves from an evil horde that infects with a bite or scratch. The other big bad here is this dark lord that is said to be the true ruler. All of this becomes important in what I thought was a super obvious way, but was informed it may not be as obvious as I thought. That being said, this book doesn’t shy away from violence, killing off characters, and some good smut. We end up on a road-trip like adventure, so I’m very interested to see where Poppy ends up moving forward. Here’s hoping she gets her adventure and growing up all in one.

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