Blood Rights

Blood Rights by Kristen Painter
Release Date: October 1, 2011
Hachette Book Group (Orbit)
ISBN13: 9781841499697

4/5 Stars

Goodreads Synopsis:
The lacy gold mapped her entire body. A finely-wrought filigree of stars, vines, flowers, butterflies, ancient symbols and words ran from her feet, up her legs, over her narrow waist, spanned her chest and finished down her arms to the tips of her fingers.

Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Now Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

I haven't been much of a fan of vampire books until recently. I've never even read Twilight. But Blood Rights totally drew me in with its eye-catching and stunning cover (I can't wait for all of these books to be released, so I can have physical copies of them all sitting prettily on my shelf!), and that intriguing description. And I am so glad that I picked this one up!

Reasons to Read:

1. Incredibly rich mythology:
   Kristen Painter takes something popular (vampires) and then injects it with her own creativity. Blood Rights is just BURSTING with symobolism and legends and a very unique spin.
2. Careful writing:
   Something I really enjoyed about this book was Kristen's writing; it's excellent and obvious that she was very careful about writing in such a way that the words properly evoke the ambience of the story itself.
3. Paced development:
   Both the story and the characters take time to grow on each other, and even to grow on the reader. And there's a definite line drawn between physical attraction and emotional intimacy.

Okay, so I didn't know that it was possible to make drinking blood sound so good, but Kristen is (somehow) able to do this and it is HOT. It might be a result of the relationship between comarré and vampires, but there is something deeply sensual about a patron feeding off of its comar. I thought I'd be grossed out (and I was at times, since Kristen does not shy away from descriptions or gore) but I was surprised by how much the writing affected me as it did Chrysabelle.

And can I just say how much I liked Chrysabelle and Mal? I loved reading about them! Neither was who I was expecting them to be at first, and they pleasantly surprised me by the amount of depth and complexity found in them. I just found their relationship utterly fascinating, from their initial attraction to each other (which makes perfect sense given the circumstances), but it isn't instant either.

There's a glossary of terms at the back of this book, which I unfortunatley didn't discover until I had already finished as I was reading the e-book. It would have been helpful at the beginning, because while I loved all of the mythology woven in the story, at times it was just plain confusing. If you aren't into details or elaborate worlds, then it could easily feel overwhelming as a reader.

I also just want to point out that I'm not sure if this is supposed to be classified as YA, and I'm not sure I'd quite consider it to be a teen novel. There isn't anything so wildly inappropriate in it (that isn't already found in other YA novels), but it definitely gave me a bit of an older audience vibe. I enjoyed that though, but I can definitely see this appealing to slightly older audiences particularly when the characters were (sort of) in their 20s.

Oh, and one of the best parts about this book? The sequels are set to be released in early November and early December 2011 which is SOON. I really hate waiting for sequels, and these are two books which will be making it to the top of my TBR pile VERY soon- I literally cannot wait to see where this story goes!

e-galley received from publisher via netGalley in exchange for my honest review; no other compensation was received.

And guys? Only $7.69 + FREE shipping for a copy of this one = awesome! (from The Book Depo)