Title: Blood Moon
Author: Brier James
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 224 Pages
Category: Paranormal/Fantasy
Rating: 4.5 Stars
At a Glance: There are some terribly touching moments in this story, some conflict that could have easily ended in tragedy, and a reconciliation that leads to the beginning of a legend. A legend I enjoyed being a witness to.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: I am a ghost. A killer. A savior. A guardian.
I am the vampyre prince.
They think I was murdered by my uncle, the king – but I’ve been waiting, plotting, for this moment for two years. And he was never part of the plan – the alpha wolf making me question everything I’ve ever wanted.
————–
Reeve Rimeara is a young alpha, not yet ready to take his father’s place and lead his pack, though his rising power can’t be denied. Upon receiving his alpha rites, he is blessed with a sacred vision; one that shakes him to the core. And all too soon, his fate arrives at the border of his pack’s land.
Daire Heroux is the vampyre prince and a revered guardian, trained to be faster, stronger, and more lethal than any natural threat to the alpha wolf he might choose to one day serve. After his sire is murdered by the king, Daire fakes his own death to flee his coven and betray his kingdom, all in the hopes to untangle a web of murder and lies and bring vengeance upon the vampyre king.
Reeve and Daire must stop battling each other, and themselves, before they can unite to try and stop a king whose power is unlike anything their world has ever known.
Review: “This is our Blood Moon. This is our legend now.”
Brier James’s Blood Moon is a beautiful debut novel. This author’s voice is lush and the prose flows in a lyrical way to lure readers into the story of a vampyr prince, a young Alpha werewolf, and the quest for revenge against a brutal king. There was not a lot I didn’t love about this book, from the imagery to the world-building and the type of nature magic and spirituality that exists which makes the setting feel both ancient and timeless and rooted in the lineage and legacy of its people.
Reeve Rimeara will be the next Alpha of the Silver Blood pack. There is no challenge to that fact to be made, and despite his youth, he’s already garnering respect amongst the pack. The wolf hierarchy is familiar to the genre, but with some unique traits that kept the roles from feeling too stale and predictable, and the author goes deeper into the Greek alphabet than I’ve ever read before to give those roles a designation. I also appreciated the relationship between Reeve and his father—the current Alpha—and his older brother, Rainer. Where so many books that deal with power dynamics within a shifter pack trend toward competition and power plays, the fact that there was a close-knit bond between the Rimeara men, absent of the constant challenge for dominance, as well as between them and their pack, was a refreshing departure from the usual.
Daire Heroux goes by several titles: the Ghost, master warder, prince, but it’s his royal title he keeps hidden because, to all but a select few, Prince Daire is dead, and in order for him to carry out his revenge against the king, he must remain so while fulfilling his role as a wolf guardian, which is what ultimately brings Daire and Reeve together; though this was not a story of love at first sight even with the mystical something that draws them to each other. I do feel somewhat conflicted about the blurb revealing so much about Daire’s storyline, specifically his true identity and relationship to the vampyre king since it was the “Big Secret” between Daire and Reeve and became such a sticking point later in the story, but it’s also revealed to readers almost immediately within the dual POV narration, so a minor qualm when compared to how captivated I was by the characters, how invested I was in the danger and intrigue, and how much I wanted them to have their happily ever after.
I appreciated Blood Moon for its familiarity within the genre and its less common alliances between the vampyres and werewolves, and the even rarer bond that grows between Reeve and Daire within this world the author imagined. There were some terribly touching moments in their story, some conflict that could have easily ended in tragedy, and a reconciliation that led to the beginning of their legend, a legend I enjoyed being a witness to.
You can buy Blood Moon here:
[zilla_button url=”https://smarturl.it/BloodMoonBrierJames” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon/Kindle Unlimited [/zilla_button]
