Reading With Tyler

Name: We Who Will Die
Series: Empire of Blood #1
Author: Stacia Stark
Publisher: Penguin / Fairyloot
Format: Hardback – Fairyloot SE
Genres: Adult, Romantasy, Paranormal
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Review:

I have been missing vampires – I really need to read some more vampires books this year because they are my absolutely one of my favourite paranormal beings. I don’t care if they feel repetitive, I just love vampires! And I was so intrigued by the roman vibes I was getting from the cover (specifically the original cover) and that had me excited.

This was brilliant honestly, it had me hooked right from page 1. I was so into this story right from the start – Arvelle is approached by a vampire called Bran who has basically manipulated the situation so that she has very little choice but to accept his proposistion. Enter the Sundering, win, and kill the Emperor. Wow, what a death sentence!!

I loved Arvelle – she lost her best friend years prior during the Sands (a compulsory fighting challenge that sigilmarked (oh god, forgive me if it’s not just the sigilmarked but I’m pretty sure it is…) have to go through) and she as a result kind of shut down and became pretty cold… But she’s having to provide for her younger brothers and keep them all alive, so becoming cold protected them all. I think the battle that she was having internally over losing her best friend, and her person disappeared as well, but needing to stay alive in order to complete the deal she made with Bran… I loved it.

Arvelle is a tricky character because of that turmoil and coldness, but I still find her to be really likeable… I feel like there are going to be readers that didn’t like her, but I am not one of them. There are friendships developing on these pages, I certainly wouldn’t describe it as a found family – but I do have hopes that it could be going that way! But I’m also understanding that this author doesn’t mind killing people, so there is definitely reason for me to be scared about liking these characters and thinking that they’re safe… because they’re probably not.

We have multiple main male characters in We Who Will Die, to the point where I wasn’t sure who there main love interest was going to be. If you could have been a fly on the text messages between me and my friend Wendy as I was losing my mind over this… ohhh you’d have laughed at me. I loved the fact that I didn’t know for sure who we were going to be needing to pay attention to! Both Ti and Rorrick were excellent (every time I think I’ve figured out who I’d choose, I change my mind…) and Carrick was great too!

I loved the dynamics between the Vampires, Sigilmarked and Mundane! The world building that we got that explained the Sigilmarked hierarchy and magic ‘waking’ aspects. Yes I loved that. I also really liked the idea of Sun Madness for the vampires and it really did make them a bit more complicated than just a ‘going in the sun kills them’ sort of a thing. I’m hoping for further world building with the Gods and the other kingdoms and the Creatures!

I loved the ending! I didn’t feel like I need more in order to explain what happened, I feel like we have all the explanation we needed and we will get more in the sequel. And I need the sequel yesterday. So, I liked the writing style, I loved the characters, the Roman influence and the vampires hit the spot! I just loved this. I can’t explain why it didn’t get the 5 stars, I just knew as I was reading the vibes didn’t hit 5 stars… But 4.5 feels perfect!

“I missed you more than I miss the sun.”