“Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate.” - Karen Armstrong 

 

I had to take over a day to contemplate Blood Over Bright Haven to write my review. Not because I was debating the rating, but because I wanted to think about how to approach writing the review. There are so many themes I could focus on when it comes to this book; I could even focus on all of them. This review would be very long if I did. 

 

The conclusion I came to was that I can’t talk about the themes because I would end up spoiling the book. Once you start talking about the themes you can’t stop. They bleed into one another. It’s an intricate web of social, political, and cultural issues…just like our real world super issues no one knows how to solve. 

 

The narrative prose and dialogue is where Wang shines brightest in this book. It’s beautiful language arranged and presented with perfect timing and so it hits exactly as it should with every line. Fantastic styling and construction with every paragraph. Every review I’ve seen/read has pointed out the uniqueness of the magic system and I have to say I’m in total agreement: The magic completely fascinated me. I found myself actually slowing down and thinking my way through the magical equations more than once just for fun. The worldbuilding wasn’t as strong, but I don’t think it really needed to be, because the world wasn’t as important as the people or characters and the characters were absolutely fantastic from the smallest role to the largest. 

 

An above-average standalone novel is worth more than any average duology or trilogy, in my opinion, and Wang has delivered a dark, violent, magical, innovative, seething fantasy I can see becoming an absolutely classic in the genre. 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by the publisher and author via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

 

File Under: 5 Star Review/Dark Fantasy/Paranormal Fantasy/Political Fantasy/Standalone Novel/Urban Fantasy