I was really looking forward to Silver & Blood by Jessie Mihalik, but it ended up being a tough listen.
The biggest problem for me was Riela. She’s supposed to be almost thirty, but she repeatedly makes the same adolescent decisions and clings to the same flawed logic throughout the entire book. It made her incredibly frustrating to follow.
The dual POV is also wildly unbalanced. Riela’s chapters are consistently three to seven times longer than Garrick’s, so you’re stuck in her head for the vast majority of the story.
The audiobook narration was mixed. The male narrator who voices Garrick has a deep, rich, velvety voice that’s wonderful to listen to, but the female narrator’s voice is a bit sharp and thin, which comes of petulant and whiny, rather than assertive and adult, and makes Riela’s very long chapters harder to enjoy.
The story itself leans heavily into classic romantasy tropes — the mistreated outcast heroine, the ancient love interest with oddly stunted maturity issues — which is fine. However, multiple insertions of same-sex relationship, and pointed, repeated references to special pronouns that fail to serve the plot or characters in any meaningful way other than disruptive political insertions that kept pulling me out of the story.
The premise had potential, but between Riela’s immaturity, the lopsided storytelling, and the forced modern messaging, I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series.