Book Review: Blood & Steel

Title: Blood & Steel
Author: Helen Scheuerer
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy, Magic

What It’s About:

Althea Zoltaire has been abandoned by her parents at the gate of Thezmarr along with her sister Elrwen. Since the night that a girl had used a Naarvian Scythe and produced darkness, when she was hidden away in a cellar by Audra along with all of the other children, and the girl was sent away, no woman could wield weapons. They have had to give them up and many women left Thezmarr for elsewhere, because of this decision made by the Guild Master, Osiris, and more specifically, the ruling royals of the Midrealms. They made this decision because of a prophecy in which a daughter born of a fallen kingdom uses shadows and darkness and rules death, bringing down the Veil that keeps the Midrealms safe from the monsters.

Thea had heard that the Hand of Death, one of the three remaining Warswords would be returning so she sneaks out to a nearby hill, and waits in the bushes until the three Warswords meet up—two of whom she had seen in the great hall often, but the third one, Wilder Hawthorne has not been in Thezmarr for a while. Wilder was the last and the youngest to become a Warsword through the Great Rite, and had earned the name Hand of Death from his many battles. The three talk, with Wilder revealing that he’s found other monsters coming through the veil every single day, and he has a heart that he is carrying of one of the monsters. He looks directly into the bush and senses Thea there, so he tells his fellow Warswords, Vernich the Bloodletter and Torj the Bear-slayer, that they will have to talk elsewhere. The three of them leave.

Thea finds herself returning to the Fortress, and she sees her sister, Wren, who tells her that she had lied for her with yet another nosebleed to their alchemist teacher, but asks her to join them as she can’t keep lying for her. That night, at the dinner in the Great Hall, Thea keeps staring at Wilder and later she returns to her room which she shares with her sister, and two other girls—Ida and Sam. They play the Dancing Alchemists—a game that they had devised as children, where they throw weapons at one another while the girl on the receiving end has to avoid the weapons with dance and swiftness. The next day, she goes through her classes on Alchemy, but then decides to dip out at some point to go to her secret spot to watch the fighting lessons. She starts practicing as well, but gets interrupted when an arrow comes whistling through and embeds itself in the tree trunk. She barely avoids it, using her reflexes, and then runs back to the fortress, only realizing that she had dropped her dagger—the one that she had received from Malik several years back—once she was back in the fortress. So she goes out looking for it again, but she is unable to find it until Wilder asks her if she’s looking for this dagger. She tells him that she is and he asks her where she got it from. Thea tries to explain that it was a gift, but Wilder doesn’t believe her and brings her over to the fortress, then walks her into the council chambers where he explains to Osiris, Vernich, and Torj that he found her with a weapon.

Thea is worried that she will be sentenced to being dismissed from the fortress, when Audra shows up and argues in her favor, telling Osiris that he needs to let the women fight because the Guardian numbers had been dwindling, and no one has undertaken the Great Rite since Wilder. She flings an alchemist weapon at Thea, who catches it mid-air, and tells Osiris that there is no one else out there who can do what Thea just did. He tells her that it’s out of his hands, but ultimately changes his stance to tell Thea that she will have to go to Harenth to speak with the Royals in order to get them to agree to let her learn how to fight. She has to make it there in three days time as they are having a celebration to end King Aretos’s mourning period. Thea saddles up a horse and with Audra by her side, they head out towards Harenth, with Audra telling her that she’s been well aware of what Thea has been up to including the Dancing Alchemists game that the girls had made up. The two talk a bit longer, until Audra stops somewhere along the road and tells her that this is as far as she is taking her, at which point Wilder shows up and takes over for them to reach Harenth.

Thea and Wilder travel together, but barely get along as they travel with Wilder refusing to teach her anything, though Thea watches him during one of his exercises in the morning, after they slept next to each other and cuddled. They make it to Harenth, and Thea petitions her cause with the king, and the two royals, though King Aretos lets her down kindly, and invites her to his celebration. Wilder tells her that you should always accept a King’s invitation, and Thea gets changed for the dinner, where she sits next to the King’s daughter, who asks Thea to call her Jasi. She makes an offhand comment to Jasi that she can feel the magic in the air, which Jasi finds strange but beyond telling Thea that it’s unusual, she doesn’t comment on it any further. During the dinner, Thea smells something, and quickly realizes that King Aretos’s wine is poisoned, so she throws a dagger at the goblet. As a result, she is apprehended until the King asks his taster to test the wine, and the guy drinks some of it, with sweat beading his forehead. The taster ends up dead, so they release her, and Thea explains how she knows what she knows and finds the culprit of the attempt. The King gives the guy the offer of dying or being sent to the Scarlet Tower, and the man decides on death, but the King tells him that the will be sent to the Scarlet Tower instead. He then tells Thea that he normally would give the person saving his life some land and a title, but he knows that this is not what Thea wants, so he revisits her request to become a shieldbearer, and tells her that he approves it. The other two royal families confer and also agree to let her become a shieldbearer. Once that agreement is received, Wilder comes up and whisks her away, so they travel back to Thezmarr together. This time, Wilder teaches her how to hunt, and gives her some of his own practice drills. They also realize that they are being followed by a monster, who really turns out to be none other than Dax, Malik’s dog, who stays by Thea’s side.

As they return to Thezmarr, he becomes more serious and quieter, withdrawing into himself. He drops Thea off with Esyllt, the weapons master, telling him that he has a new recruit and so Thea joins in on the lessons, though there are a lot of comments about her including from this one guy named Sebastian Barlowe, who has always been cruel to her after she landed a punch on him six years ago. That said, she quickly becomes friends with Kipp and Callahan, who take her under their wing a little bit during the first few sessions. The three continue training together, going to lessons together throughout the months as they prepare for the Guardian initiation test that will be happening in three months. During this time:

• Thea gets stabbed in a sparring match with Seb, and tries to make her way to Wren, only to find herself in a closet, where Wilder finds her and helps staunch the blood before taking her to Wren, who finishes taking care of her and mending Thea. While with Wren, she agrees to do some lessons with the Alchemists, as Wilder had told her that being a Guardian and especially a Warsword is not only fighting but knowing how to do other disciplines. So she spends time with the Alchemists learning how to create things and also how to provide battlefield remedies to help soldiers on the battlefield. Wilder in the meantime pummels Vernich because this situation had happened on Vernich’s watch, and he had said that nothing happened, also attributing everything to hazing.

-At some point, Thea helps Malik go to his room when he is turnt around as a result of Seb and his lackeys bullying him. She also returns to sit with him when Wilder shows up and it she learns that Wilder is Malik’s younger brother, while Wilder learns that she knows Malik. When she leaves, Wilder wonders what Malik is trying to get at because he has so many secrets but doesn’t really talk any more after his last battle. He does believe Thea though once she tells him that Malik had lost his dagger upon his return to Thezmarr after the battle, and when she went to return it to him, he all but shoved it back at her and tried to say something that she couldn’t understand, though she started to sit with him and read to him soon after that.

-Thea starts to become friends with some of the others in the group, including Lachin who used to follow Seb around. At one point, Seb goes off at her during a lesson, and Lachin tells him to shut up because they’re tired of hearing his whinging. This surprises Thea to hear that someone else is coming to her defense, but also Seb is shocked that one of his friends would say something against him.

-It is revealed that the Warswords will take on apprentices after the initiation test, and Wilder and Thea agree that they will not be Master and Apprentice, because they don’t get along. Ultimately Thea puts down Torj as the individual that she wants to be apprenticed to. Wilder and Torj talk about this and Torj asks him why not choose someone that he will actually like rather than get assigned to someone else that he may not know. Wilder doesn’t respond at all, though he thinks it’s for the best that he and Thea are not Master and Apprentice.

-Thea, Cal and Kipp get sent on a mission to Harenth, and agree to meet at the Laughing Fox after their deliver their missives. Thea’s happens to be to deliver a letter to the King from Osiris, so she goes to meet with King Aretos, who in turn gives her a King’s Coin, and tells her to use to it pay for things that she needs or wants and that he will be offended if she doesn’t, as she did save his life after all. She leaves and meets with her friends at the Laughing Fox, where it turns out that Kipp’s real name is Kristopher. They also learn that Kipp was born and raised in the pub after his mother died, and so that is how he knows everyone there, and is treated as one of the bunch. The owner, however, tells him that he needs to pay for his tab, so Thea uses her King’s Coin to do that and Kipp orders a lot of food for the three of them. Cal is shocked that everything that Kipp has been telling them all these months ago was true, from the laughing fox, to Kipp’s beautiful girl named Milla.

-When the three of them return to Thezmarr, they find chaos as some of the monsters had found their way into this world through the Veil. The three Warswords are to lead the shield bearers and Guardians to battle in Delmira against the monsters. So the three friends get on fresh horses and join the army marching there. Thea also receives a pack from Wren who tells her that she will know what to do with this if she had been paying attention in the classes with Farissa. The contingent marches to Delmira and they find the monsters, which Wilder recognizes as Rheguld Reapers. He tells the other Warswords that there is no way that the army can take them, as they can only be killed by having their hearts carved out, so they will have to fight them. But the army can create a distraction. The battle begins, and at some point one of the reapers knocks Esyllt back, so Thea and her friends try to do what they can to keep the reapers engaged away from the Warswords to give them enough time to kill the reapers. One of the reapers focuses in on Thea, and Wilder feels fear for her—he has grown to care for Thea, just like Thea has grown to care for him. The Warswords manage to kill almost all of the reapers, though run gets away from Vernich. Thea administers the aid she received from Wren and Kipp tells her that Lachin is dead. They return to Thezmarr, where they have a memorial for those who died during the battle.

-King Aretos shows up in Thezmarr and reveals that he will be staying there as the initiation test will happen in two days time. Thea cannot find Kipp and Cal in the great hall, so she goes to look for them, but cannot find them anywhere. She then overhears Torj and Wilder talking about someone speaking up as whatever had happened to two of the individuals goes beyond the typical hazing of the shieldbearers. Thea realizes that Seb and his lackeys had taken Kipp and Cal, and she speaks to both Torj and Wilder about it, telling them that they are in the cave systems that fill up with water. The three of them head out to the system, and Wilder and Thea find both Cal and Kipp, saving them from the water, though the two are already soaked. There is lighting nearby, and as they head out of the system, Thea realizes that lighting is about to strike her—she pushes Cal to Wilder and gets hit by lighting, though it does nothing to her. This has Wilder asking her who she is. They go to Wilder’s house, where they put the boys into bed, and while Torj goes for Farissa to help the boys, Wilder and Thea end up kissing, only to break up when someone comes. He then stays away from her, and when Thea wakes up, she overhears Kipp and Cal talking, during which Cal says that it’s her fault that they had gotten into this situation with Seb, because Seb has something against her, not them. So Thea leaves, and ignores her friends for the next day while she trains.

-The day of the initiation, Thea finds Wilder by the tree where he shot an arrow at her, and they end up having sex. They agree that if she gets apprenticed to someone else, they will see where this takes them. Then Thea goes in search of an actual sword and shield, and she makes up with Cal and Kipp. Together, the three of them go to the chained islands, making their way across to them by using a pole to swing across. There, Kipp is the first of them to find his Guardian Totem, without much fighting or anything. Then they go to a second island, where the Cal finds his, though he goes crashing back down as there were vipers near his totem. Thea uses her battlefield pack to get the venom out of Cal and make sure he doesn’t die on them. Thea is the last of them to find her Guardian Totem, which is in the claw of a bird. She manages to kill the bird, and get her totem, and then the three of them make their way across back towards Thezmarr. Wilder, on the other hand, had gone to see his brother, Malik, who gives him books about the Royal lineages of the mid-realms. As Thea makes her way back to Thezmarr, she runs into a Rheguld Reaper and Wilder shows up to help her fight it off. He throws her the dagger that she had owned, and together they fight it, but the reaper pierces Thea’s chest, which terrifies Wilder. Then, the reaper turns on him, and Thea uses lighting to kill the reaper. They take the heart back to Thezmarr and reveal what they had come across. Osiris had announced that Seb would be apprenticed to Vernich, and Cal would be apprenticed to Torj, but then he notices that Thea is holding onto the dagger and when Wilder says that he gave her the weapon back, the same one that had started this whole thing for Thea, Osiris tells him that Thea is apprenticed to him then. Wilder takes Thea aside and tells her that they can explore what they are to each other if she declines the apprentice ship, though Thea doesn’t want to and tells him the truth: she only has two years left to live per the fate stone and she wants to become a Warsword before she does. Wilder then tells her that they cannot do what happened in the bloodwoods again, before fleeing the broom closet.

-Thea goes to her sister and accuses Wren of lying to her about magic. Wren reveals that she indeed did know that both of them had magic; hers had manifested when she was fourteen, and she learned what she can about using alchemy to suppress it. She figured that Thea also had it but that the way that it manifested in Thea was that it made her be on the move, though she made sure to coat Thea’s fate stone with the suppressant which is why Thea hadn’t felt it almost ever. Thea tells her that she lied to her, and feels betrayed by it all as she heads out of the fortress to a cliff overlooking the water. There, she throws her fate stone off of her, and uses her magic, both of which Wilder sees and tells her that they will figure it out together when she confides in him that she doesn’t know. Thea passes out and he takes her to his cabin, where he looks at the book that Malik had given him, and learns exactly who she is.

My Thoughts:

Oh my goodness, the book is so darn good! I really enjoyed this story, though some things feel a bit convenient in terms of revealing information about the characters—like it’s convenient that Thea finds the poison, that she goes to the caves where it so happens that there is always lightening—but I still overall enjoyed the storyline and the tension between Thea and Wilder, seeing how their romance comes alive, though it leaves me wondering just what will happen between the two of them in the second book because where they left off, they aren’t together anymore. I wonder what kind of adventures the next book will bring for the two of them.