Craving a gritty, kickass heroine? If you like guns, magic, & heartbreaking drama, don’t miss this book!Orphaned. Hunted. Pissed as hell.Helena Martin doesn’t know who she hates more, the sorcerers who fired the magic-laced bullet or the gang-lord master who used her mother as a shield. It’s not the price she expected for escaping magical slavery, nor is the unstable power now pulsing in her … escaping magical slavery, nor is the unstable power now pulsing in her veins.
Caught between her former master’s hunters and the Guild Sorcerers determined to kill them, she finds a safe haven at a dog rescue willing to take in a different kind of stray. But Helena’s newly-unleashed power is a beacon for her enemies. And they’re threatening the first place she’s ever thought of as home.
˃˃˃ “A visceral, heart-pounding ride of a book that will keep you guessing until the final bloody breath.”
~Award-winning fantasy author Pip Ballantine (The Books of the Order, The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences)
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First things first: This is an almost 5 star. Not quite perfect, but… darn. You don’t expect this in indie YA fiction. Even after a few years of reading around, basically this is still my favorite YA indie book EVER.
Honestly, when I started this book I was… underwhelmed. Action action action. Terms and concepts being casually inserted with no context. No idea who or what some of these people were. Sigh. Another high-octane YA affair, all mouth and… well, being YA there’d probably be trousers later. But (and this is a *big* but) I am very glad I kept reading. We slow down, we get to know the characters who are important and slowly start to unravel where the fantasy part of the urban fantasy makes sense. The plot, after that initial surge, goes to a much more digestible pace. There are fast scenes and slow scenes, but nothing ever felt like it dragged.
Helena could have been just another feisty YA angst-fest, but you know what? She’s not. She reacts proportionately to the circumstances, even goes as far to question her own emotions or lack of them. She may feel blank, but there’s something about her that while she’s not the easiest to love, she’s far more likable than some YA leads. She’s sad, scared, and needs time to rediscover her humanity rather than being a spiky ice-queen.
The side cast’s diversity is a Millennial snowflake’s dream. There’s a variety of ethnicity, sexuality and mental illness on show, and yet not once do these characters feel unnaturally or cynically forced into existence. Jaesung and Krista have a wonderful chemistry with each other, and bring Helena in even when she by all rights her inability to engage should repel them. There is romance, but again, it feels real. No insta-love. No swooning, or angsting, or repeating over and again how much their love cannot be because reasons.
The baddies aren’t often clear or physically present. They don’t need to be. This story is mainly about Helena and is character driven, rather than being about some magical underworld war.
Now, why the 5 but not 5 stars? The early character development and explanation of what is going on (or lack of it). Also some formatting/spelling issues that may well have been resolved in updated editions. These almost put me off after a few chapters.
Regardless of these perceived negatives, Unleashed has much about it to love. The characters, the unusual and detailed magic system, the gentle unfolding of the story that never treats the reader like an idiot, and the relationships built on real emotional connections.
I enjoyed the book so much that I pre-ordered the next in the series. While not perfect, it does exactly what a good novel should: engage, engross and make you feel so invested in the characters and their world that you care. A seriously intelligent YA read, and I’m looking forward to finding out just how this interesting cast of characters will adjust to their new situation.
-I received a free e-book copy of this from a giveaway. I was not asked to review and do so of my own free will purely because the book turned out to be that good-