#the blood heir

I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you publisher.

DISCLOSURE: I was provided an eARC of this book before the author made changes after the big controversy. Things might have changed in her final version.

It’s honestly a DNF from me.

I am not sure if the author did any research into any of the languages she romanticizes in her novel. On page one she uses the word “varyshki” as something to be worn on your feet. Varyshki are mittens - I mean Google could have told you this, you didn’t even have to go out, buy a Russian/English dictionary, look up the word and read its definition - all you had to do was GOOGLE IT. To me this simple example of laziness showed how the rest of the book was going to go and I was not wrong. Then we got to the name of MC - Anastacya Mikhailov. Oh boy…did Miss Zhao know that in Russian language all feminine names end with an -a? I highly suggest she reads up on Russian nominatives or at least consults The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden who wrote “On Russian names” in the end of that book and explains how they’re used.

Look - writing about a culture that’s not yours is hard, it’s why so many authors get into trouble. But writing about a culture without doing ANY research beforehand and just making is sound cool is disrespectful and harmful to the said culture. I’m not even going to get into the slavery argument because so many reviewers said it way better than me and I didn’t make it far into the book. I just knew I am not going to waste my time with this - there are too many good books out there that I could be reading instead.

If you want great, strong female characters set in Eastern European cultures, I suggest you read The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Polish inspired) and Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente.