Customer Reviews

Blood Magic: Book One Of The Ballad Of Kirin Widowmaker (Bk. 1)

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Running from the remorseless Mor, from the doomed battle at Gamth's Pass, Kirin draws on her forbidden powers to protect her love, Jazen Tor--but too late to save him, too late to retract her "sweetlings," the things she has "birthed" of the spirits of the dead.

The story of Kirin, blood magician, scout, mother, bear-killer, "abomination," starts at a relentless pace and never lets up through skirmishes, political turmoil, prejudice, deadly encounters with the Mor, and the challenges of controlling powers she doesn't understand. In alternate chapters, Cook skillfully guides the reader through Kirin's past, growing up in the shadow of her demanding twin sister, haunted by a marriage gone bad and her sister's brutal murder, but empowered by the teachings and the hidden books of wise old Edena.

When Kirin is saved by the beautiful Lia Cho and suspicious Brother Ato, her life takes on a new set of difficulties and hard lessons to learn, mourning her old love, fostering the possibility of something new. Lia, a runaway student with the extraordinary power to summon lightning, is taken with the mysterious Kirin, in defiance of the priest of Shanira who openly declares Kirin an abomination--damned, someone who manipulates the dead, and draws her power from the blood of the living.

Matthew Cook's Blood Magic is a dark feast of loss and blood and love, a fast paced fantasy in a world reminiscent of Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion, compelling characters with the ability to draw on otherworldly powers, who push the boundaries of life and death. I look forward to reading the sequel next year, exploring Cook's world further, and discovering where Kirin's tale takes us.

I normally don't care for books written in the first person. However, Matthew Cook handled the style extraordinarily well. So well in fact, that I soon forgot I was reading. He was able to take his prose and transport me into the world of his imagination. His characters are vivid and fun with real personalities and lives.

I'm looking forward to the sequel!

I had trouble finishing this one. After a promisingly creepy start, the main character suddenly discovers she is pregnant. This makes her change personality from one second to the next, giving up her necromantic ways and getting born again as the worshipper of another god. This wrecked the book for me because it is so unbelievable.

She was brought up to be a lady and to make a good match but when her twin falls in love and marries the drunken womanizing Marcus; she insists her twin marry his best friend. Both women are brutalized by their spouses but where Kirin accepts it her sister learns blood magic from the local herbwoman. When Marcus kills her Kirin while in a drunken stupor assumes her identity and using her blood magic to suck the life out of him and brings it into her.

She runs away from her village using the dead who obey her command until they crumble into dust. Her magic is taboo by the other religions but Kirin ignores their pious mouthing and does what she needs to do in order to survive. The Mor, monstrous creatures, emerge from their caves and underground tunnels to make war on humanity as they do every few decades. Kirin becomes a scout in the Imperial Army and she watches five thousand soldiers killed by five hundred Mor. She aids the refuges healing with blood magic even though Brother Ato condemns her and Element Master of Air Lia Cho tries to support her even if she doesn't approve of the use of blood magic. However, that might be the only way humanity can defeat the Mor although the people she is trying to save won't accept her methods.

BLOOD MAGIC is a spellbinding sword and sorcery tale about a young woman who goes from an innocent girl to a person who kills when she needs to survive or when helping people who scorn and fear her when she helps them against a common enemy. It hurts her not to be accepted for what she is but she knows she is not evil and does what she thinks is right although many question whether the means is acceptable even if the end is saving humanity. The Mor remains an unknown quantity as people (and readers) don't what motivates them. This is the first book in what looks to be a fantastic fantasy series.

Harriet Klausner

Kirin is really her twin sister who is in her mind due to a bit of blood magic our heroine performed after her sister was murdered by her husband... Why? Because they were twins and she couldn't live without her. OK. And why exactly did a fairly quiet, gentle girl start studying some very black magic? That's even harder to say. Boredom? Curiosity? Or maybe what they say about the quiet ones being the ones to watch out for is true?

But however bizarre and cloudy the motivations, and I'm never quite sure with Kirin!, she's still a fascinating but definitely twisted character. It's just fun sympathizing with someone who creates creatures she thinks of as her children, totally in thrall to her from the bodies and souls of the newly dead... and someone who tends to kill things a lot, even if it is necessary sometimes... I mean, Kirin is no white-washed romantic vampire type who only nibbles and never kills! No, she is definitely a necromancer--using black magic and dark sorcery to kill and to resurrect things and gain power over the dead.

They say that villains do not view themselves as such, and Kirin is no different. She thinks the gods know about her and so she's a part of the plan, despite all the priests and townsfolk crying "abomination" now and then and wanting to run her out of town with pitchforks. The odd thing is that she actually DOES try to be good... or relatively good!

At any rate, her adventures--from the beginning, taking us through her past and in the present when humans are beset by the very inhuman Mor--are quite a roller-coaster, both frightening and scarily fun...

This is the first book in the Kirin Windomaker series. This was planned as a trilogy and the second book in the series Nights Of Sin was released in 2008, but I have yet to see any information on the last book in the series. This was a good book, overall I enjoyed it although it is pretty dark in tone.

Kirin is a necromancer and regularly uses her magic to raise the dead as her "sweetlings" which are grotesque but powerful creatures that defend her. She is a scout in the army and is helping defend the human population against the powerful and deadly Mor, a race of non-humans hell-bent on destroying humanity. This book is a solid fantasy setting, in a dark and war-ravaged world.

Kirin is a character with a serious set of issues. Her motherly love for the monsters she calls back from the dead is a bit disturbing at times, as is her sexual lust when she is bathed in her enemies blood. Overall though she is a complicated and conflicted character that you can't help but feel sorry for at times. Kirin is neither good nor evil but walks a grey line somewhere between the two.

The chapters alternate between the current time where Kirin is helping the fight against the Mor and past time, showing how Kirin became to be who she now is and how she learned her dark art.

There is a lot of blood and a lot of war in this book. Overall it was well done and engaging. I enjoyed learning about Kirin's history and about how she got to be the conflicted necromancer that she ends up as. Cook's writing style is very readable, if a bit dark and serious for me at times. This is not an uplifting book, it is dark and full of human misery.

The only ray of light comes in the form of Lia, a lightening mage who ends up accompanying Kirin in her fight against the Mor. The book ends at a decent point, but not much is resolved showing that this definitely continues on into another book.

I enjoyed the book and characters enough the I am interested in reading Nights Of Sin. This is an intriguing, if dismal, world and you can't help but want to know more about these wretched characters and find out why the Mor are after them. If you like fantasy with a kind of urban fantasy flare to it this book should appeal to you. I enjoyed the way Cook dealt with necormancy and the questions behind whether or not it is good or evil.

At first I was skeptical but since it was a gift from a friend I read it. I was done in a few hours but boy was it a good few hours!

The cover looked rather boring and the summary less then appealing but the story was very fun.

The ONE big complaint I had was when she was trying to be good. It showed (to me anyway) a weakness in her character. I loved the 'dark mother' feel that the first half had. The ending though was very good!

Kirin is a necromancer who does not see anything wrong with it. She uses her powers to help even though people around her are scared of them. The book is well written and grasps the interest of the readeer from the beginning. The encounter with Lia, accepted white wizard who can call storms adds tension to the story. On the other side there is the strange relationship that Kirin has in her own mind with the ghost/soul of her sister. All these elements are put together in the middle of a thrilling battle against alien creatures. Then, on top of that Kirin discovers she is pregnant.

The problem with the book is that after all this build up, perhaps due to the pregnancy hormones, Kirin discovers the horror of her sins, and that all she wants is to be a mother and a good girl. From that point on the book looses quickly tension until it finishes in a battle where Kirin looses her child and decides with her white wizard friend to run away in search of new adventures that I guess will be explained in a next book.

The backcover blurb didn't sound interesting to me at all, but a good friend of mine, whose tastes I trust, recommended it highly so I gave it a shot. It's a darn impressive debut, with a strong female protag who works blood magic and can raise the dead once more to fight, but who is sympathetic in her need to help people, even when those people are afraid of her and the magic she performs. A short fast read and I'm looking forward to the sequel.