Asra is a demigod with a dangerous gift: the ability to dictate the future by writing with her blood. To keep her power secret, she leads a quiet life as a healer on a remote mountain, content to help the people in her care and spend time with Ina, the mortal girl she loves. But Asra’s peaceful life is upended when bandits threaten Ina’s village and the king does nothing to help. Desperate to protect her people, Ina begs Asra for assistance in finding her manifest—the animal she’ll be able to change into as her rite of passage to adulthood. Asra uses her blood magic to help Ina, but her spell goes horribly wrong and the bandits destroy the village, killing Ina’s family. Unaware that Asra is at fault, Ina swears revenge on the king and takes a savage dragon as her manifest. To stop her, Asra must embark on a journey across the kingdom, becoming a player in lethal games of power among assassins, gods, and even the king himself. Most frightening of all, she discovers the dark secrets of her own mysterious history—and the terrible, powerful legacy she carries in her blood.
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Inkmistresss
Audrey Coulthurst
As soon as I saw the word demigod, I had to get this book. I don’t know why, but I love books with gods and demigods, I think it’s just a run off from when I loved mythology as a child. And I wasn’t disappointed because demigods in this world are really interesting characters. I think there were 6 gods? I might be wrong about that children from each god have different powers. And because of this, we get to go along and find out who Asra’s parents truly are and why others don’t seem to have her powers.
Ina is our main antagonist throughout, but I felt her character was very flat. Asra mentions that she’s changed so much to become the person she’s up against, but we don’t get to know Ina at all before this change. We only see her as Asra’s lover which isn’t really telling of her as a person. I also think that we see Ina through a very biased way as Asra is thinking about her. So our actually narration about the antagonists are fueled on a lot of emotions rather than cold hard facts. This did however make Asra a lot easier to relate to and care about.
The relationships in this book do seem to be built up extremely well. I completely see how the relationships formed and there wasn’t an instant love connection between them. I even ended up routing for the main couple, which I almost never do as I usually dislike romance. But the way they connect is almost familial, they make their family by choosing one another which just felt really heartfelt. I also really enjoyed that Asra was bi, but this isn’t commented on at all and it’s normalised within this world.
I started to get a little irritated about the plot of the book. Asra is aiming to find the fatestone which will allow her to rewrite the past without dying. But if she achieves this, surely this whole book was for nothing as she changes the past? The book plot will be rewritten! So I was actually hoping for failure for some of the book. I don’t wanna spoil things, but there’s multiple different avenues they could take and I’m really glad that Asra chose one that was smart. Fortunately we did not have a dumb MC.
Overall I’m super excited to read the series this book is a prequel to! I think the first book is out, but the second book is coming soon. So I will be getting my hands on them at some point.
POSITIVES
+ Strong female characters
+ Detailed magic system
+ Demigods!
NEGATIVES
– Some characters lacked depth
– Goal was to reverse the entire book
I received Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst from the publisher via Edelweiss. This is an unbiased and honest review