REVIEW: Silver and Blood by Jessie Mihalik
When a vicious beast begins attacking her fellow villagers, Riela reluctantly agrees to enter the forbidden forest and kill the monster as she’s the only mage available – or so she thought.
Untrained and barely armed, Riela is quickly overwhelmed when one beast turns into two. She fears her death is at hand until the unexpected arrival of a scarred, strikingly handsome man with gleaming moonlit magic changes her fate – and provides a rare opportunity to learn more about her own fickle power.
After being rescued and healed from her fight in the forest, Riela awakens in a magical castle complete with a gorgeous library, a strange wolf, and the surly man who saved her life. She soon learns Garrick is both more powerful and far deadlier than a mere mortal mage –he’s a dangerous Etheri who has been locked out of his kingdom in Lohka for nearly a century, and his powers are weakening.
Trapped in his castle and surrounded by the treacherous woods, the spark of attraction between Riela and Garrick slowly ignites into fiery desire. But the more they discover about Riela’s magic, the more suspicious Garrick grows of her identity. As they unravel the secrets and lies connecting Riela’s past to Garrick’s, the tenuous threads of trust between them start to fray.
Because Riela’s life –or her death – might be the key to regaining everything Garrick has lost.
Dear Jessie Mihalik,
The blurb explains all one needs to know about the novel going in and provides a good idea of the vibe of the story. Riela and Garrick don’t trust one another for much of the book. For Riela, it’s a product of not being able to believe Garrick’s motives could be genuine. Her mother died giving birth to her and her father died when she was 15. Since then, she has had to eke out a meager living doing odd jobs for villagers but has only been able to rely on herself. After her magic manifested the year before when she saved the village from a flood, the villagers have been wary of her and she’s felt more alone. She lacks a sense of belonging but desperately wants to have it at the same time. Riela has a habit of viewing anything Garrick says or does through a lens of “I am less than. I don’t belong”. Sometimes this makes more sense than others and there were times I became a little impatient with it but I suspect that’s because I’m a romance reader and I knew who Garrick was to her and she hadn’t realised it yet (!). She has significant baggage and that informs her response to Garrick.
On Garrick’s side of things, he’s been betrayed before, he’s stuck in his castle in Edea, away from his people in Lokha and, the Blood King is actively trying to kill him. This beautiful woman who stumbles around making messes with seemingly innocent motives could be exactly who she says she is – or not. There were times I was impatient with Garrick too (because romance reasons!) but he definitely had cause for suspicion.
Still, Garrick begins to hope once he meets Riela and, as we all know, hope is a dangerous thing.
Garrick is Etheri royalty and is used to giving orders and being obeyed. Riela is definitely not used to being ordered about and this causes them to clash often. They’d reach an uneasy truce and then one or the other of them would react/overreact and then they would once again be at odds. Still, each time, they drew incrementally closer.
As Garrick begins to put aside his mistrust, he finds he has caused (emotional) damage to Riela as a result of his suspicions. The more he gets to know Riela the more he feels the needs to protect her and the more she inspires that dangerous hope. I do love a protective hero and Garrick was particularly determined Riela come to no harm.
“You will not come to harm while I yet live.”
I smiled softly. “I appreciate the thought, but you can’t protect me from everything. I could trip on the stairs tomorrow and break my neck. My heart could give out in my sleep. Grim could decide he likes the taste of human. There are thousands of ways to die, and living in fear of them is no way to live at all.”
“Grim will not harm you,” Garrick growled. “And I’m moving your room to the ground floor.”
Garrick’s people, the Etheri, regularly make “bargains” and “vows” to one another – mostly there a plenty of loopholes a clever person can use for their own benefit but Riela has no experience of any of it. Garrick despairs at her “terrible bargaining” but this just forces him to be even more protective. This is a thing I took a lot of enjoyment from.
I don’t want to say too much more about the plot here; that would be too spoilery. I will say that it became apparent that Silver and Blood was just the first novel in a wider arc. I was getting more than a little nervous about the prospect of a cliffhanger ending. For those DA readers, who, like me, are allergic to the dreaded cliffie, I will say that the ending is only mildly so – more tempting anticipation rather than actual “what do you mean the story ends there?” territory. In other words, it did not freak me out but did leave me wanting more.
In many ways, Silver and Blood sticks to familiar fantasy tropes. The identities of the two protagonists, their quest and the barriers to achieving both it and their HEA are not new. However, the worldbuilding is rich and different to most of what I’ve read before and, ultimately, it’s not so much what the tropes are, but how they’re executed. Silver and Blood does what it does very well; it has high stakes and characters who are both flawed and interesting and about whom I came to care very much.
Most of the story is told from Riela’s point of view, but there are a fair amount of chapters from Garrick’s perspective too (maybe a 60/40 or 65/35 split?) so I felt like I got to know them both pretty well. I’m very much looking forward to what’s next for this couple.
And in truth, the stories where the princesses rescued themselves were my favorites anyway.
Grade: B+/B
Regards,
Kaetrin
I was very excited to see this review! I’m a huge fan of Jessie Mihalik’s science fiction romances, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing her write full-length fantasy romance.
One question: this is tagged as “dark fantasy horror,” which made me a little anxious. The author said on Bluesky, “I’m not sure who at the publisher put S&B in “dark fantasy horror” on Amazon, but I assure you, it’s not horror. I tried to argue it’s not dark, either, but got outvoted. If you like my sci-fi books, it’s in line with those: fights, curses, a little light murder, romance. ” Some of us are fragile these days, and I for one am leaning more “cozy” than “dark” in my reading. How “dark” would you say it is?
Thanks for this review. I have been on the fence about this one and not really wanting to spend the money on a copy. I have enjoyed the other series she writes. I’ll have to stick this on wish list.
@SonomaLass i wouldn’t have thought dark or horror fits as a description at all. There are bad guys and they do bad things of course but that’s pretty typical for SFF. It is perhaps a little darker than her space opera books but I think that’s more a genre thing. There is one time the hero does something to send a strong message to another Etheri noble which is described as culturally appropriate in all the circumstances (the Etheri are a fairly ruthless people) but which Riela found a bit much but that’s about it.
But I wouldn’t describe the book as dark or horror, no.