Tagged: reign of blood
Amplified by Alexia Purdy
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Who wants to be the prey in a world full of hunters?
In the aftermath of the end of her world, April Tate decides that it’s high time to leave the city that never sleeps, Las Vegas. After learning the origins of a Zompire Plague remedy, she risks her life to steal the antidote, makes the decision to separate from Jeremy for a while, and joins a small band of new and old comrades on a trip to the Pacific Coast. There they search out a legendary hive of vampires who are more than just wild, blood drinking creatures, they could be the very people she needs to help her.
On a mission to save the last of humanity, April will use the antidote to save some from eternal damnation, but will her decision bring hope for the future or create an ever bigger, unforeseen devastation?
[Full disclosure: Alexia Purdy provided me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.]
I never quite know what to expect from Alexia Purdy but it’s usually good. Amplified was no exception. It was amazing!
April is a very changed person. She’s found the best friend she thought was dead, is blood-bonded to Christian (her former enemy) and is determined to find the cure for the vampire plague that’s devastated her entire world. Looking back on who she was in the first book, April has changed quite a bit. She has to learn to let go of her mother, who committed suicide and she must do the same with her little brother because he wants to stay in the underground human city. It’s time for her to grow up and move out and a lot of the book focuses on that as she journeys to find her way in a world that has been turned upside down.
The plot was very fast-paced, more so than the first two books in the series. You have April seeking a cure at Christian’s old colony and then her travelling elsewhere. There’s danger around every corner with Ferals and other nasty things lurking about. Alexia Purdy rarely lets the pace drop and when she does it’s only so you can catch your breath before she throws the next plot twist at you. It’s very intense and I honestly couldn’t put my Kindle down until I finished.
I liked how April’s world expanded throughout the novel. We get to travel to different places and see how badly they were hit by the plague. We get to see other parties vying for a cure and still others trying to suppress a cure at all costs. There are some very important moral questions brought up and I like how at the end there’s still some ambiguity surrounding whether or not to release a cure into the world. Have we seen the last of some of these important questions? Absolutely not! There’s still a long way to go and I know April will rise to face any challenges that come her way.
A kick-butt protagonist, excellent world-building, a fast-paced plot and some very interesting moral dilemmas make Amplified my favourite book in the Reign of Blood series so far. I can’t wait for book 4!
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Reign of Blood by Alexia Purdy
(Cover picture courtesy of Alexia Purdy’s Blog.)
“Never tease anything that wants to eat you. My name is April Tate and my blood is the new gold. Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I’m just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise…”
In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she’s willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her.
[Full disclosure: I was sent a free ebook by Alexia Purdy in exchange for an honest review.]
With the vampire over-saturation of only a couple of years ago, it’s difficult to write about vampires. What’s even harder in general is reading about vampires as I love vampires that are portrayed as stone cold killing machines. Most YA vampires at not like that at all.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by Alexia Purdy’s vampires. There are rabids, which are stone cold killing machines with few emotions or thoughts and then there are vampires as we’ve come to know them: sophisticated, intelligent and strong, but still undeniably human. Both types of vampires drink blood, but with humans in short supply how they adapt is fascinating. The thinking vampires also have a few more traits I found interesting but won’t really get into because they’re spoilers.
What I liked the most about Reign of Blood was April herself. In the beginning, she sees the world in black and white: humans good, vampires evil. Simple, right? Obviously by the end this viewpoint has changed drastically but I love how she changes over a longer period of time. April doesn’t wake up one day and think “Hey, vampires are okay”. No, she gradually comes to befriend some of them and learns that maybe she isn’t entirely innocent herself in this world.
Characters like Blake and Rye were interesting and just when I was getting ready to cringe (two males, one female = love triangle), Alexia Purdy spared me. She even sort of inverted the love triangle trope by the end, but I’m not going to get into that. Either way, Reign of Blood was action-packed but still slow enough that character development and world-building were present. My only complaint about the book is that the dialogue can be quite stiff at times. I don’t know any seventeen-year-old, let alone one that lives with only her mother and baby brother with no human contact, that speaks like that. But the dialogue problem was minor compared to the world-building, character development and pacing.
I give this book 4/5 stars.