Blood Will Tell by Samantha Young

Title: Blood Will Tell

Series: Warriors of Ankh

Author: Samantha Young

Length: 4913 Kindle units (includes preview of next book in series)

Rating: 5 stars

The Plot

Eden doesn’t want to be an evil soul eater, but she’s starting to think she doesn’t have much of a choice. For her entire life, she has known that she will one day be like the rest of her family, feeding on others’ life essence in order to survive. Her craving for souls grows larger every day, and she knows that soon she will no longer be able to put off the Awakening Ceremony in which she will take her first life.

Eden can’t talk about her problems to anyone outside her family, not even her friend Noah. Little does she know that Noah already knows her secret. For he is a warrior of Ankh, a race of beings put on this earth with one goal: to destroy the soul eaters. But in this case, he is willing to wait and see whether Eden is really a monster or if she can be saved.

The Good

Blood Will Tell is an excellent and engaging novel. The mythology is unique and interesting. It contains psychic vampires, immortals, and Egyptian gods, but these elements are all woven neatly into the origin story.

Eden’s struggle to not become a monster is very poignant and multi-faceted. I particularly like the gradations of good and evil in the novel. Eden’s parents and cousin have no redeeming characteristics, but everyone else is somewhere in between. Eden’s brother Stellan consumes souls to survive, but he loves his sister. Her classmates are often cruel, but they don’t deserve to have their souls eaten. Noah is a warrior on the side of the good, but his entire life as a high school student is a lie.

The Bad

I don’t really have too much bad to say about Blood Will Tell. There are a few points that aren’t entirely pleasant to read. Eden’s family is made of truly despicable people who do unspeakably horrible things that I don’t really want to dwell on, but that’s not so much a negative of the book. Really, it’s a good thing for the book if I have extreme dislike for the bad guys.

The good guys, on the other hand, do not feel entirely good. The book details her inner struggle to resist her desire to devour souls, and we want her to find a way to be free of this curse. Noah and his fellow Ankh seem to have the solution to her problem, but they refrain from offering it to her, insisting that she needs to prove herself. After awhile, it’s pretty obvious that Eden doesn’t want to be like her family, and it seems rather cruel that the Ankh are holding out on her.

As I'm posting this, I see another negative - Blood Will Tell is only available on Kindle. That's def a negative for anyone with a Nook.

And every time Eden’s inner soul-eater voice starts dramatically telling her to feed off of those around her, all I can think is “om nom nom SOULS!”

The Romance

There is not very much romance in Blood Will Tell, largely because the two main characters spend most of the book lying to each other. They’re so focused on their secrets that they keep each other at a distance through the course of the story. But they have enough of a relationship that there is hope for romance in the future.

There is also an indication that being a soul eater supplants the desire for romance. Eden’s parents get their greatest satisfaction from abusing humans and taking their souls. Her brother Stellan brings girls up to his bedroom, but all he does with them is take bits her life essence. Her cousin Teagan physically desires her, but this is do more to a desire to possess and control her than anything related to love. And when Eden looks at Noah, an attractive boy apparently of her age, all she can think about is how much she wants to eat his soul.

Will I read more?

I actually have already read the second book, and I bought the second book, though I have not yet read it. Samantha Young also has a few other series of books out there, and I am looking forward to reading them. I hope they are as good as this one.

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