A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jenson

Source: Netgalley, thank you to the publisher!
TL;DR: If you enjoy Romantasy you’ll probably enjoy this, if you want nuance or depth maybe go elsewhere.

Plot: A young woman is used for her power. Pretty much it.
Characters: Fairly two dimensional? Freya felt very familiar and everyone else filled their roles nicely
Setting: A fantasy world that had Norse ‘vibes’
Magic: Pretty much just ‘God blood’. There are hints at other magic, but we mostly just get told some people have god blood and can use it.

Thoughts:

A Fate Inked in Blood is the newest Romantasy release from Danielle L Jenson, whose Bridge Kingdom is one of the most recommended in the genre. This one is Norse in inspiration about a young woman with the power to make a King after a spoken prophecy.

I can see this doing fantastic – I really can. This is going to be a hit for a lot of readers, especially of Romantasy. Unfortunately for me this was just okay? I found the writing easy, bingable, and quick. And there were moments that I really enjoyed! However I had a huge issue with the characters and what I felt like was very lazy writing in the characterization.

For the most part these characters filled roles, 2 dimensions at most. Our main character is treated as and used as a tool which led to my biggest issue in this. The only characters that weren’t outright sexist for most, if not all of the book, were… well all of them. Even our main love interest in this cracks sexist jokes constantly. Our primary ‘villain’ of the piece is interesting until he starts talking to or about our main character then he looses everything and it’s just sexism and neglect. Most the women in this were cold, or outright bad to our main character, an annoying trope in a lot of romance. All of this could be used well, but it felt like it wasn’t nuanced in any way or had a purpose besides riling up the reader.

As I stated, I enjoyed parts of this, but lack of depth and nuance to these characters just left me annoyed. As an aside, I also felt like the amount of work done to actual capture anything besides the ‘vibe’ of a Norse series was lacking as well. If you’re going in for the ‘fantasy’ or actual character depth, perhaps this is a skip. But if you want just a fast and emotional read, this could be a winner.

3 out of 5 flaming axes