Official Review: Blood Claimed by Liz Mahaffey

[Tamorie Hargro]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Blood Claimed" by Liz Mahaffey.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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An adventure-driven historical fantasy, Liz Mahaffey's Blood Claimed presents an intriguing plot following powerful witches, bickering wolves, a gentlemanly jungle cat, foul-mouthed dragons, and other mysterious magical beings in a rush to uncover the key to saving their kind before a common evil seals their fate. Including themes of friendship and family, loyalty, love and fiery passion, freedom, knowledge, and inclusion presented by a number of characters different in all manner of ways, Mahaffey’s Blood Claimed has something for every reader to cling to as they jump aboard a thrilling ride.

For multiple reasons hindering me from completing a quick review—as the novel features a fair amount of content and is by no means a light read, totaling 783 pages including a prologue, twenty-seven chapters, and an epilogue—I must say that I enjoyed and disliked the novel in equal parts.

Blood Claimed’s greatest strength was Mahaffey’s research allowing the development of several plotlines, settings, and characters. A geographical and historical journey, it covered the mid-1800s to the late-1900s set in locations such as the U.S., Spain, France, Guatemala, as well as the mythical land, Faery. It was evident to me that Mahaffey had done an extensive amount of research on world history, cultures, and individual speech patterns. I enjoyed, for the most part, the well-blended mixture of fact and fiction/history and mythology from which I learned a few interesting historical facts (such as an alarming revelation about ancient book pages and human skin…). Also noteworthy were the book’s inspiring creativity and well-rounded descriptions of clothing and places—though, especially effective in describing the varying abilities possessed by the powerful Fae beings.

I especially appreciated the consistency in character development. For instance, some characters’ accents, like Madadh’s, never once faltered and the intelligence surrounding Zee, Alejandro, and Uncle Jacques convincingly presented them as lawyers and a scholar. On a similar note, I was drawn into the characters themselves, especially Jacques for his wit and fearsome combat abilities. Also, Michaela, whose unrepressed tongue and biting attitude made her absolutely hilarious to read.

Finally, I was, mostly, a fan of the several instances of meaningful and often controversial dialogue covering topics such as religion and freedom of choice, prostitution and women’s (general) rights, and the historical lines between humanity and savagery.

While I liked a great deal of the book, there were many things I could not get past, such as the plethora of grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. The mistakes, mostly consisting of hyphenation errors such as: “well educated,” “half assed,” “well muscled,” “thirty one years old birthday wishes,” and “fortress like towers,” – four of these on the same page – were hard to read straight through. However, most aggravating were the consistent errors throughout the entire novel involving the giving of ownership to the name ‘Jacques’. For example: “The rustling of even darker wings above diverted Jacques scrutiny of the treacherous area,” and “Unlike Jacques own damnable luck…” Also absolutely confusing was the disregard for unimportant characters’ names—for instance, a minor character, Zyanya, misspelled as ‘Zyana’ and/or ‘Zyanaya’ multiple times—and for the Spanish words ‘señor’ and ‘señora’ (used frequently throughout the novel and not once spelled correctly with the tilde over the ‘n’)—when so much attention was given to characters as well as their languages (full sentences and phrases often spoken in Latin, Spanish, French, and Gaelic) and their cultures.

Another shortcoming Blood Claimed suffered was the infinite number of uninterrupted, sometimes pages-long character monologues, especially performed by the intelligent Jacques and overzealous Zee, which made the already 783-page book much longer. At times, the narration pointed out that Jacques spoke so much that the book’s characters grew bored with his dull monologues… just as I grew bored with reading them! Monologues which often included random historical facts which had little to do with the situation at hand and were, as Zee once mentioned, “sure to have a point eventually.”

Finally, I couldn’t resonate with the ending at all, as the last chapter seemed more like an epilogue and the actual epilogue would have better performed as the prologue for the next book in this series. While the author may have been going for some measure of consistency (including an epilogue for the prologue), the epilogue had little to do with the story’s overall ending and seemed unnecessary to me.

In all, I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars as it was amazingly creative, well-researched, and sufficiently entertaining, but was hindered by a multitude of errors, extraordinarily long monologues, and an incongruous ending. As I am intrigued by the larger storyline, I would not be opposed to reading the next book in the series, and I would tentatively recommend Blood Claimed to adult readers with a fierce love of history and mythology, discussions on social issues, and those who crave passionate romance and devoted friendships in fantasy-adventure novels.

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Blood Claimed
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[Miller56]

Thanks for the review. I think I will wait for a future edition that has been more thoroughly edited.

[kandscreeley]

This is a long book made longer by unnecessary monologues. The errors would definitely be distracting. I hope the author can clean this up some as it seems interesting in other respects.

[Erin Painter Baker]

I love the idea of the gentlemanly jungle cat as a character, but not certain I am ready for an over 700 page book filled with grammatical errors.

[Tamorie Hargro]

Thanks for the review. I think I will wait for a future edition that has been more thoroughly edited.

I think that's a wise choice, honestly. It's a book worthy of attention for a number of reasons, but it's hard to give it full credit because of the poor editing. Thanks for reading!

[Tamorie Hargro]

This is a long book made longer by unnecessary monologues. The errors would definitely be distracting. I hope the author can clean this up some as it seems interesting in other respects.

I really enjoyed how unique this book was, and the characters were especially lively. But those monologues and errors definitely killed the momentum. Thanks for reading/commenting!

[Tamorie Hargro]

I love the idea of the gentlemanly jungle cat as a character, but not certain I am ready for an over 700 page book filled with grammatical errors.

Goodness, yes, Alejandro as the gentlemanly jungle cat was a pleasant addition to a fascinating novel! Most of the characters were this book's highlight. However, the amount of errors spanning 700+ pages was pretty appalling. Thanks for commenting! (:

[kdstrack]

Those monologues would be a challenge! (Although it was humorous that the characters themselves got bored!!) I enjoyed your comments about the controversial dialogue. Wonderful review. Thanks.

[Nisha Ward]

Ouch. When there's so much care and research put into something, it can be a bummer when it gets destroyed by easily avoided errors. Added to that the numerous monologues and I do have to wonder if the writer was going for a certain word count and used those as padding.

[aacodreanu]

I admire your patience: first to read such a large book with so boring monologues, then to write such a detailed, well-justified and exemplified review. I totally agree that a book should not be published before it is well edited.
thank you for your effort!