Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves is the first book in a new YA fantasy series set in 19th century London and Hungary. Sixteen-year-old Anna Arden is an outcast of Luminate society; she hold no magic in a society where magic is a symbol of class and proves your Luminate bloodline.
Anna would give anything for even a drop of magic but instead magic tends to go haywire in her presence. Which is how Anna finds herself exiled to a small estate in her families native Hungary. Anna travels to Hungary with her grandmother and their meets her quiet uncle and two cousins she has little in common with.
In Hungary Anna learns more about the society she longs to belong to and these revelations confuse and frighten her. She is no longer sure what she wants, nor what is right. Discontent is sweeping the land and Anna seems to fall straight into the Romani conflict and the Hungarian rebellion.
I’m not going to lie, I felt pretty lackluster about this one. There have been a couple of these lately, that have really interesting magical premises but don’t really deliver. I felt the same way about A Shadow Bright and Burning not long ago. A book that is totally up my ally but just doesn’t quite deliver.
I was pretty bored throughout this one. I didn’t really believe Anna as a character; her convictions were so gung-ho one minute but in the same sentence she talk about needing society and finding acceptance in her world. She was a little wishy-washy and a lot of her actions weren’t always believable for the time period she was supposed to be living in–magic or not.
One thing I did enjoy reading about in this book was the authors take on the political upheaval in Austria-Hungary at the time and the Romani culture. The magic weaved into this, very loosely based, historical time period was interesting. Setting the book during this time period was probably the books one merit.
I don’t know, I guess I just don’t have much to say about this one, which should tell you something. It passed the time but I’m not sure if I can bring myself to read the sequel when it comes out. This one gets two stars from me.
That’s all for now!
-M-