King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde Book 1)

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of our deliveries are made by Royal Mail as we think they give the best service and cover all areas of the UK. The second I read the synopsis I actually immediately thought of “The Bridge Kingdom” by Danielle Jensen. It wasn’t a perfect five for me, but it has been a hot minute since a fantasy romance captured me so entirely.

However I must say this, the author toes the line of gratuitous smut overshadowing the plot, and she does it pretty well, remembering that she does actually have a story to tell and not getting completely carried away with the erotica bits of her novel (there would be nothing wrong with that per se, it just wouldn’t be my thing). Clair’s worldbuilding and mythology influences are of the eastern European/Slavic flavor so the overall novel gave me very strong The Witcher and Castlevania vibes. We don’t get much character development outside of Isolde’s, and I felt that even Adrian suffered a little bit from being under-developed, but sadly, most side characters got close to nothing. How is Commander Killian able to talk so boldly to Isolde and her father, the king, and get away with it?Despite the fact that I only gave this book 3 stars and my many complaints in my review, this is still an entertaining quick read. Also, I’m very aware that this is the first installment which means that many of my questions should be answered in the sequel— I won’t know for sure though since I’m not planning on reading the sequel but, you know, oh well. And although I now hate that series, I have to say that Jennifer Armentrout did a better job with the characters. We mainly use Royal Mail Tracked 48 Service for goods which weight less then 2kg, all other goods will be delivered by a Courier. Because the whole thing made it sound like he was getting revenge against her people or something, but god this disappointed me so bad, it hurt.

Adrian and his vampires did not tell everything to Isolde because she made it no secret that she still considered them to be her enemies and didn’t trust them, so of course, they wouldn’t trust her with their secrets and battle plans, yet Isolde was hurt every single time she learned that they didn’t share something with her. At least, most of the time Isolde realized that her behavior and jealous/hurt reactions were ridiculous, but the fact remains that I had to read wayyyyyyy too much about her jealousy and her whining about her hurt feelings for me to like her. Clair has also written, you should read it if you haven’t) that you’d think I’d get bored, but I find authors’ writing styles to carry so much more weight. So I felt like this would be good to dip my toes into a new fantasy world while also keeping the romance reads that I’ve been picking up lately.I’d seen a few reviews of this before I picked it up and from those reviews, I was already half-convinced that I would love this and well, I wasn’t wrong! A surprise it was when I found myself feeling okay as I read further, though a few things still irked me. Firstly, there’s a reincarnation trope in here, and I felt like by the middle of the book I realized what was going on. This books is nothing new (taylor reference yes) but actually a combination of good parts of FBAA, Shadows between us and TVD.