Blood Heir (Part 1)
Welcome back, everyone.
The City of Brass, by S. A. Chakraborty, was originally going to be my next book review . However, while working on that review series, I read Blood Heir, by Amélie Wen Zhao. What I found within supported a key assertion to my analysis of The City of Brass.
You see, the biggest issue with The City of Brass is that it cuts corners. Essential characterization scenes are told rather than shown. Key aspects of the worldbuilding aren’t even told, leaving it up to the readers to invent head canon for why things work the way that they do. The plot is distorted to accommodate formulaic elements.
In another instance, I would chalk this up to a writer who lacked the self-discipline to make the necessary effort (and, granted, I can’t definitively rule that possibility out for Chakraborty, either), but The City of Brass instead appears to be a case of a book that was blatantly written for a different audience than what it was marketed to. Chakraborty acknowledged in a 2017 interview with Kirkus Reviews that she explicitly wrote the book for her community, identifying said community as the Muslim populations of Brooklyn and New Jersey. A chunk of the flaws in her worldbuilding can be explained by the assumption that her readers would be devout Muslims who would inherently understand the mindsets of the characters and the ideology of the book’s Muslim faction. That interview also heavily implied that she was writing for a Young Adult audience, which explains the pacing, the uneven focus that different elements in the story receive, the formulaic plot, the functional yet inconsistent characterization, and the use of outrage bait to steer audience perception using low-hanging moral fruit.
There is nothing objectively wrong with writing for either Young Adult or for an audience within a specific culture. However, when one turns around and publishes for general Fantasy, which is both an older age demographic and an audience that is overwhelmingly not in that cultural niche, “writing for your audience” becomes “misunderstanding your audience.” That IS an objective flaw.
To bring this back to Blood Heir, it is a book that shares many of the same flaws as The City of Brass. More specifically, it contains common elements of Young Adult literature. It is also, arguably, more flawed in these aspects than The City of Brass. A key difference is that, unlike The City of Brass, Blood Heir was marketed as Young Adult. It was published through Random House Children’s Books, and I bought it in the Young Adult section of Barnes & Noble. This book understands the audience to which it is marketed.
So, without any further ado, let’s dive into this book, and explore how elements that might hamstring general Fantasy are at least tolerable when marketed to an appropriate audience.
STATS
Title: Blood Heir
Series: The Blood Heir Trilogy (Book 1)
Author(s): Amélie Wen Zhao
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
First Printing: 2019 (first hardcover edition), 2020 (first paperback edition)
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books (hardcover by Delacorte Press, paperback by Ember)
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers will be necessary to properly break down this story. I will include “Heavy Spoilers” in the heading for any section where further detail is required. I will keep the first paragraph of these sections as spoiler-free as possible in case you want to read the book for yourself before coming back for the full analysis.
PREMISE
Both the back of the paperback and the Barnes & Noble website present the following blurb:
In the Cyrilian Empire, Affinites are reviled. Their varied gifts to control the world around them are deemed unnatural—even dangerous. And Anastacya Mikhailov, the crown princess, is one of the most terrifying Affinites.
Ana’s ability to control blood has long been kept secret, but when her father, the emperor, is murdered, she is the only suspect. Now, to save her own life, Ana must find her father’s killer. But the Cyrilia beyond the palace walls is one where corruption rules and a greater conspiracy is at work—one that threatens the very balance of Ana’s world.
There is only one person corrupt enough to help Ana get to the conspiracy’s core: Ramson Quicktongue. Ramson is a cunning crime lord with sinister plans—though he might have met his match in Ana. Because in this story, the princess might be the most dangerous player of all.
This premise is accurate, though I would argue that focus has been put in the wrong place. The intrigue / conspiracy is window dressing. Even when it becomes the priority in the third act of the story, it feels like it is only being dialed up so that Ana's personal conflict could have relevance to the climax. Most of the story is focused on the oppression of Affinites. The corruption of Cyrilia does play into that, though with how everything is framed, it really doesn't have the emotional weight that is implied by the blurb.
RATING: 4/10 (general), 6/10 (Young Adult)
Blood Heir is every bit as stiflingly self-important as Son of the Storm with how it handles its messaging. The climax is as nonsensical and artificial as Notorious Sorcerer. The action makes The Stardust Thief’s fights look as choreographed as The Last Airbender (the animated show). Ana is a violent, narcissistic sociopath who makes Daylen Namaran seem well-adjusted and principled (Daylen’s crimes are more numerous and severe, but he at least understands and accepts the moral grounds upon which his wrongdoing is condemned, whereas Ana only cares about her self-image and others’ perceptions of her). Her romance with Ramson is paint-by-numbers and tainted by her sociopathy.
And yet … if you are specifically looking for Young Adult fantasy with a romance subplot, I would recommend it. You may enjoy it if you like straightforward rise-above-oppression narratives. It's not good, by any stretch, but it is readable.
The fact that I ranked this book higher as Young Adult than overall is not intended to imply that Young Adult literature (or any media aimed as younger audiences) should be held to lower standards of quality. It is also not intended to imply anything negative about the target demographic or anyone outside that demographic who enjoys Young Adult. It is instead recognition of the constraints that meeting audience expectations can place upon a story – constraints on complexity, pacing, etc. Said constraints might result in a less satisfying experience for audiences with more maturity and more literary experiences.
I cannot claim to be an expert on Young Adult literature at this time, as it has been quite a few years since I have dedicated much time to it. Most of my Young Adult exposure these days comes from watching films based on Young Adult properties. That said, I can reflect on my own past experiences and expectations and try to gauge how I might have viewed this book when I was in its target age demographic.
And, honestly? I think that I might have enjoyed this book back then. There was a time when I didn’t mind such blunt messages (save for virtue signals or transparent commentary on specific real-world issues), when the emotions of a fight took precedence over the choreography and flow of cause and effect, and when formulaic plots and character dynamics were a way for me to predict if I’d like a book just by reading the back cover.
All this is to say that, yes, this book has flaws, but when one considers the expectations of the Young Adult audience, those flaws aren’t quite as heavy. What merits it possesses get far more mileage.
AFFINITE OPPRESSION
This element is the core of the story. It simultaneously embodies many of the flaws while also demonstrating the impacts of writing for its audience.
The Affinites
Affinites in this world are, as the blurb indicates, people with supernatural gifts. This is very much a system of magical superpowers, and the powers can be boiled down to evocative umbrella terms (“flesh Affinite”, “flame Affinite”, etc.). The system is very soft, giving a lot of leeway as to what a given Affinite can do: an Affinite who controls emotions can also conjure illusions, and an Affinite who manipulates earth can also restore life to plants.
The only three established limitations that affect all Affinities.
(1) A substance called blackstone is supposedly impervious to manipulation by Affinities. However, I can’t name a signal instance where it actual impacts the narrative. Blackstone is used as set dressing to imply danger in a given location, but when blackstone armor can’t stop Ana from using her blood Affinity (effectively bloodblending) on its wearers, the imperviousness of this substance ceases to have meaning.
(2) A poison called Deys'voshk can disable an Affinite's powers (and paralyze said Affinite). Ana is disabled by Deys'voshk at multiple points. She is established as being special, as she has devolved a limited tolerance to Deys'voshk through repeated exposure, but this is used effectively to introduce a ticking clock element to fights. She is also not the only Affinite to have developed this tolerance.
(3) A category of Affinites known as yaegers can suppress the powers of other Affinities by actively focusing on a target individual that is close by (the exact distance is unclear) and within line of sight. They can also sense Affinities in others. Yaegers are used as minor antagonists at a few points in the story. While there are issues with how they are used, these issues are a function of general flaws in the action scenes, not of the yaegers specifically.
The Oppression
We start learning about the oppression of the Affinites within the first three pages. Affinites in the Cyrilian Empire are forced into indentured servitude. Immigrants are roped into unfair labor contracts. Local Affinites can be arrested for not having the right papers and then sold into servitude from the prisons. This system depends heavily upon corruption among law enforcement, with common prison guards and the elite members of the military alike cutting deals with so-called Affinite brokers.
At a cultural level, the Cyrilians refer to the Affinites as “deimhovs” (“demons”). They are also referred to as “witches” on a few occasions. It is not clear how much of this is just people flinging slurs versus something that is integrated into the religious beliefs of the society.
Analysis
Magic System
This magic system is not well-written. It has promise at the start. The opening chapters include an action sequence where Ana's abilities are pushed to their limits, thereby giving a sense of how it might be used throughout the story to provide cool scenes that still have narrative tension. However, the story ultimately dissolves into a blur of style over substance. Even with Deys'voshk and the yaegers, there is a sense that things happen with the magic because it is meant to be cool, not because there are meaningful rules at play.
That being said, I think that what rules exist are adequate for a Young Adult audience. The sequences involving magic focus on the emotions at play, not unlike the fights in The Stardust Thief, and the role that the magic plays in the climax is at least based upon pre-established elements. I could see how a younger audience might not worry as much another the details and instead just go along for the ride.
Oppression Narrative
This oppression narrative is both extremely simplistic and extremely vague. The story really tries to milk the audience's sympathy for how bad things are for Affinites without properly fleshing out the mechanics of this system or how the common folk really feel about it. This isn't as badly handled as the persecution of the alchemists in Notorious Sorcerer, yet it does feel rather hollow.
Compounding the problem is that every encounter the Ana has with the oppression and corruption is treated like this huge, emotional revelation that changes her view of the world around her. The first time it happens, it doesn't make sense. Ana was explicitly stated to have spent 11 months roaming the Cyrilian Empire, searching the seedy underbelly of society for information on her father's killer, and the opening of the story spells out that she understands the oppression, yet a fire Affinite boy tending to a furnace and a wheat Affinite girl selling pastries are supposed to be dramatic moments where she sees the true corruption of the world. The many, MANY times where Ana has a reaction after this, it's just ridiculous. This book is a good example of how overexposure desensitizes a reader. After a while, you just stop feeling the shock that Ana is supposedly feeling.
I don't think that this delivery is unworkable for Young Adult. This book is not a serious commentary on modern or historic issues of forced labor and human trafficking. The main theme is that there are good and bad elements in life, so you have to fight for the good ones. The oppression of the Affinites is evoking a common trope of the Young Adult genre to help advance this theme. As for the handling of Ana's emotional reactions, I can see it as an attempt to accommodate an audience that is less used to subtlety in their stories.
Virtue Signaling Versus Outrage Bait
Since we just did the series on virtue signaling, I want to say up front that I do not believe that the narrative about oppression in Blood Heir qualifies as a virtue signal. It's hard to write this message off as a signal when the entire narrative is structured to support it without needing to turn the audience's attention to the real world. There's also not any virtue to be wrung out of it. The message is not in any way controversial or challenging for a Western, English-speaking audience, so there's nothing to elevate Zhao as being virtuous.
That said, the handling of the message does read as outrage bait.
For those of you less familiar to social media or digital content creation, outrage baiting (more commonly known as “rage farming” or “rage baiting") is the practice of pushing content that actively seeks to aggravate and anger people, thereby producing comments, dislikes, and other reactions that algorithms interpret as system traffic and therefore reward the content creator for producing. In this literary context, outrage baiting provokes a negative emotional reaction from the audience to invest them in the story as quickly as possible. This usually involves invoking some iteration of the Kick The Dog trope (whereby a character does something evil just to convince the audience that the character is indeed evil).
Zhao really wants the audience to understand that the Affinites are oppressed. Ana's reactions to every encounter make it clear that we are supposed to have an emotional reaction to it. Ransom, a man with no qualms about theft or murder, cannot stomach exploiting Affinites, indicating that this is supposed to be the moral line that establishes those who are capable of redemption versus those that are not.
Outrage bait in adult Fantasy is lazy and manipulative. It's still those things in Young Adult, yet at least here, it is more understandable. The moral binary makes it easier for the audience to understand the factions at play.
FORMULAIC WRITING
Blood Heir is extremely predictable. By this, I don’t mean that every single element of the book is plainly mapped out, but that so many elements within it have been done so many times before that there aren’t any genuine twists. Everything feels very formulaic. The elements that are intended to be surprises don’t have emotional weight. Those would-be surprises that follow the formula feel like the story is just going through the motions. The ones that are genuine surprises are only that way because Zhao pulls a Deus (or Diabolus) ex Machina to throw in something completely random.
That’s not to say that there’s no foreshadowing in this book. It’s just that it falls flat. Foreshadowed elements of the plot and world are devoid of any subtlety. If you’ve ever read a fantasy story involving a prophecy that outlined the core plot beats of the story, thereby taking away any sense of stakes or tension, then you’ll be familiar with this situation. When a plot beat or worldbuilding detail is foreshadowed in Blood Heir, you immediately know that it’s something that it going to be critical down the line. Foreshadowed characters have the opposite problem. Characters are casually mentioned in Ana’s backstory, are almost completely forgotten for the bulk of the book, and then show up in vital roles closer to the end. Their return to relevance is supposed to be emotionally heavy, but because they received no development, I found myself being briefly confused as to who they were. I can only think of one of these character reintroductions that worked, and I suspect that’s because the whole point of his reintroduction was to be shocking. He crossed Ana’s path by accident and derailed a well-laid plan in the process. My confusion put me into the same mindset as the characters.
These issues are spread throughout the book. However, the climax quite effectively demonstrates every angle of this problem.
Climax (Heavy Spoilers)
In concept, the climax of Blood Heir isn’t a bad one. Everything in the book thus far has built up to this moment. It’s the details that fail it.
That was my one-paragraph spoiler buffer, people. Please go read the book, or else skip to the next sections, if you do not what the climax of this book spoiled.
Ready? Good.
At the end of Act Two of this book, Ana catches up with her father’s killer and learns the truth about the murder. It turns out that the man she’d bee blaming for the murder was just a puppet. The true killer was her aunt Morganya (one of those background characters who had been forgotten for the bulk of the book). The big twist that catapults us into Act Three is that Morganya is secretly a flesh Affinite whose power enables her to control a person’s mind. She has been using this gift to discretely murder the members of Ana’s family one by one through proxies. With Ana made a fugitive, all that remains is for Morganya to force Ana’s brother, Luka, to name her as the regent and heir before she finishes him off. In this conversation, the man Ana had been blaming for her father’s death reveals that Ana’s Affinity can override and break the mind control.
Straightforward setup thus far. Ana needs to break into the palace on the day of the ceremony when Luka announces Morganya as regent. She can then break Luka’s mind control while revealing Morganya’s treachery. The challenge will be getting into first the palace and then the throne room so that this can happen.
And, at the start, this goes smoothly. Ana and Ransom break into the palace. There’s a confusing action scene at the throne room doors. Ana bursts into the throne room and accuses Morganya.
The first sign of things going wrong is with breaking Luka’s mind control. Ana has been directly told how she can do this. Yet, for some reason, she does not immediately free him. It is only midst of loudly exchanging accusations with her aunt that it finally dawns on her to just use her power, and it is framed as some grand revelation in the eleventh hour. What should be a tense climax falls utterly flat because Ana takes so long to use the solution that the audience knows she should ultimately use. It is frustrating, not rewarding.
Fine, though. She uses her powers. We then get a brief fake-out where it seems like she failed. Her brother continues the ceremony to assign his heir … only to name Ana as regent and heir instead of Morganya.
This sort of quick fake-out is a trope in many stories (not just Young Adult) that is used to wring every lost drop of potential emotion out of a scene, but it falls apart under the slightest bit of reflection. If Luka had simply ended the ceremony without announcing an heir and ordered that Morganya be arrested, then Morganya loses. She was not in the line of succession, so even if he died before any punishment could be issued, the throne would not go to her. All that pretending to go along with her plan accomplishes is the risk that someone will mishear him and assume he went through with appointing Morganya. (I made this mistake myself, only realizing that Morganya hadn't won when I hit the next Ana POV chapters and saw the fallout.)
Still, okay. This makes some sense as an ending. Ana has overcome her personal conflict with using her powers (well, not really, but we'll get to that) and thereby been rewarded with the political power to address the corruption in her country. This is a very predictable, paint-by-numbers ending, but it does work.
Then Morganya’s right-hand man, Sadov, pops up behind Luka and stabs him.
This is a Diabolis ex Machina (Deus ex Machina in favor of the antagonists) at its finest. Yes, we could assume Sadov was close by. Yes, his Affinity (emotion control) would allow him to incapacitate guards and get close enough to stab Luka. The problem is that this was not acknowledged as a possibility at any point. The threat to Luka's life was explicitly that Morganya would kill him via poisoning once he had formally designated her as his heir. Changing the course of the climax by having Sadov stab Luka is narratively identical to saying, “And then God sent a meteor crashing through the window and blew off Luka's head.”
Ana is, somehow, the only person who sees the stabbing. When she rushes to Luka’s side for his final words and uses her Affinity to rag-doll Sadov, no one else puts two and two together. No one gives the benefit of the doubt to the person the Emperor announced as his heir, despite the fact that they were all there to formally show their support for his decision to announce someone as his heir. The story tries to justify this with some legalistic bickering prior to the stabbing, but the arguments raised in that exchange also disqualify Morganya from taking the throne by legal means.
But then Morganya simply seizes the throne. The ceremony that would have added her to the line of succession had failed, so she has no authority to do this, yet she does it, and she orders that Ana be taken away for execution. Ana is only saved because the man who she previously thought was her father’s killer poisons her with a paralytic and tricks Morganya into thinking he’d killed Ana, thereby allowing her to escape the dungeons via the chute used for dumping dead bodies.
At first glance, what I just summarized in the past four paragraphs might sound like a break from formula. However, throwing random or incoherent developments into a story is not inherently breaking a formula. It instead enables the author the change the formula being used. Prior to Luka being stabbed, this book was a standalone story. Ripping the victory away from Ana and handing it to Morganya allows for a dark, Empire Strikes Back-knockoff ending that keeps the story going (and, thus, allows sequels to be written). This is another case where I strongly suspect that the author only had one book planned and hastily rewrote the ending to accommodate a sequel at the request of the agent or publisher.
Analysis
The climax of Blood Heir is damaged by this formulaic writing style. It is transparent that it was constructed to milk the maximum emotions possible from the scene without putting in the legwork to earn those emotions. This is the worse example of the problem throughout the book, but it is far from the only one.
How does this tie back into it being Young Adult, though?
Well, frankly, a lot of the issues I've just identified lean on the fact that readers with more experience start to tire of emotional spectacle and begin looking for internal, logical consistency in what they read. This applies to movies as well. Consume enough stories, and you’ll start to encounter the truly great and timeless ones, and that experience will allow you to recognize problems in stories that lean more on spectacle.
I believe that this is part of the reason (definitely not all of it) that the Harry Potter books are given such flak these days. They are quite functional as magical mystery stories for children, beginning whimsical and transitioning into darker themes as the series progresses and the audience matures. However, looking back, many plot holes become clear, and the worldbuilding buckles. That is not to say they are bad books, but a part of their quality is contingent on the audience will not have the range of experience needed to think critically about what is presented on the page.
Taking this back to Young Adult, the target audience will have more experience than, say, the intended readers of the Harry Potter books. However, that experience will still be quite limited. These are still young readers seeking escapism, and their desire for more mature content will typically prioritize tone and spectacle (violence, sexual elements, etc.) over good storytelling. Both predictability and nonsensical randomness are therefore tolerated if they facilitate an emotional payoff (or, at least, a knee-jerk emotional reaction).
I think that the climax of Blood Heir may well dazzle Young Adult readers. The characters involved were not properly developed, but they were established. Ana should have used her Affinity on Luka the moment she walked into the throne room, but some semblance of setup and payoff still exists in the final product. The reversal at the end is random, but if one was already caught up in the emotions of the moment, I can see how it would be a gut-wrenching twist.
NOW FOR THE FIGHT SCENE
We are not quite done with Blood Heir. The fights scenes and the characterization of Ana also warrant exploration. While both are influenced by the story being for Young Adult audiences, their flaws are so significant that they drag down the story regardless. Join me next week for the deep dive.
Have a great week, everyone. I hope to see you all then.
