My second read of the year was The Witches Blade by A.K.Mulford, this book is the second in the series: The Five Kingdoms of Okrith. I read the first book in the series late in 2021 and quickly become obsessed with it, so I bought the second before I’d even finished the first.

A Sort of Summary

This book picks up the story right where we left off in the aftermath of the events in the first book, The High Mountain Court. This time the narrative follows Ruadora, the youngest child of the Dammacus family and Remy’s (book 1’s protagonist) last remaining living relative. At the end of the first book, Ruadora claims one of her family’s birthrights, The Immortal Blade. A sword so powerful that the one it’s bound to cannot be pierced by arrows and other weapons, and the wielder of the sword cannot miss, taking down even those out of reach with just a point of the blade. As Remy heads off (BOOK ONE SPOILER) to reclaim her family’s throne, Ruadora heads North with supposed ‘Witchslayer’ Renwick, who is the new King of the bloody and notorious Northern Court.

The Blue witches, who have been permuted by the Northern court during his father’s reign are divided between Renwick’s court and the enslaved army his Uncle still keeps. The blue witches in Renwick’s camp follow him reluctantly because of his families history and everyone is looking to Rue to bridge the gap between the Witches and the Fae, which she has no idea how to do when she feels like she belongs to neither. Together, Renwick and Rua set out to undo the curse his Uncle has forced his blue witches to cast on their fellow witches, turning them savage and insane. All the while these two damaged individuals fight their growing feels for the other, believing themselves to be unworthy in turn.

What did I think?

Ummmm LOVED IT. I enjoyed it as much as the first one, I stayed up just as late to read because I was loving it so much. The world building in these books is fantastic but the way they also handle things like fated love, sex and relationships, is literally the healthiest representation I’ve ever read in YA fantasy. It plays with those fun, ‘too damaged to be loved’ tropes without being toxic and nothing significant happens romantically until the characters have undergone a certain amount of healing. Also, we meet characters in this books that we also met in the last from Remy’s POV but because Rua’s experience with them has been completely different, they are written completely different when seen from her POV. There were characters I really liked who I hated because of how they are written in this book, as well as characters like Renwick who I disliked before that you get to see in a different light.

In short, the writing is excellent, the characters are amazing and the story is SO GOOD.

Plus, she’s an indie author who does really fun Tiktoks, so go support her now by buying her books! The audiobook just got released and I immediately downloaded it so I could do an audio re-read, so you can count me in as thoroughly invested in this series.

A list of 10 book tropes you can use to look for recs

Err, so this is literally what the title says it is, if you’re stuck trying to remember what book tropes you like so that you can look for book recommendations, I’ve made you a little list of the top 10 ones

by antoniabernardinblog