“A Blade never betrays his king.
Promoted to the top rank among King Respen’s assassins, First Blade Leith Torren hides his involvement with the Resistance. How many lies will it take to protect his secret?
Renna Faythe has done nothing but survive for the past four years, but now Leith’s courage inspires her to try to be something more. If only she could figure out what that duty might be.
When the unthinkable happens, faith wavers. Friendships tear. What else will they be forced to deny?
But this time, Leith faces his greatest fear.
He can’t save everyone.”
Series: Book #2 in the “Blades of Acktar” series. Review of Book #1 Here!
Spiritual Content- Daniel 3:17-18 & 2 Timothy 2:12-13 at the beginning; Scriptures are mentioned, remembered, & quoted; Songs/Hymns are sung; Stories about Daniel are shared and paraphrased; Prayers & Blessings over food; Many talks about God, Jesus, Daniel, trusting God, God being with us, being in God’s hands, & praying; ‘H’s are capital when referring to God; In this world, being a Christian and/or owning a Bible is illegal; Renna struggles with her faith, trusting God, & praying when it seems like many bad things are happening and God is not answering her prayers; Renna nearly denies her faith or thinks about it (x3) to save her and her people thinking that God would know the truth *Spoilers* but each time Brandi other jumps in and rejects doing that or others help Renna realize that true safety is in Heaven and not on earth; She feels peace after knowing this *End of Spoilers*; Many mentions of God, Jesus, trusting Him, God being in control, being in God’s hands, & being changed by God; Mentions of Bibles, Bible reading, & those and events in the Bible; Mentions of Christians, faiths, & witnessing; Mentions of prayers, praying, & blessings over food; Mentions of hidden churches, church going, secret services, & ministers; Mentions of Heaven; Mentions of cross necklaces; A mention of miracles; A mention of a blessing; A mention of Godspeed;
*Note: The king believes he has the power over others’ lives rather than God and wants Christians to deny their faiths; Someone comments on starting to believe that Renna and Brandi “must hold a curse or something” to be able to survive as long as they have; Someone else accuses Renna of having sorcery (but she does not); A mention of luck.
Negative Content- A couple mentions of curses (said, not written); Leith has to lie often to keep his cover (justifying that his lies are saving lives and would rather have more lies than more deaths on his conscience); Eye rolling; Lots of near death moments, fighting, being attacked, being cut (including on the throat), being held at knife-point and nearly killed, holding others at knife-point, being slapped, being covered in blood, major pain, injuries/wounds, blood/bleeding, & almost passing out (semi-detailed); Finding a mangled corpse (up to semi-detailed); Seeing fights/fighting, others being killed (executions), lots of blood, & headless bodies in a mass grave (mostly slit-throats or beheadings; including Renna remembering seeing her parents killed & Leith remembering killing someone, up to semi-detailed); Remembering seeing & hearing murders/deaths (up to semi-detailed); Helping someone injured and bleeding (up to semi-detailed); Grief (up to semi-detailed); Leith is an assassin & has killed or helped killed others before; Leith wonders if killing the corrupt king would be justified as it would save lives, but does not kill him; Many, many mentions of deaths/murders (including of parents), assassinations and attempts, bodies, blood/bleeding, weapons, & grief (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of thinking about killing someone (including Leith for his father when he was young & admits killing the man in his heart over and over again); Mentions of wars & fighting; Mentions of torture & executions; Mentions of beatings & being punched/slapped and whipped; Mentions of screams, people being shot and stabbed, & attacks; Mentions of fires; Mentions of thieves & stealing; Mentions of lies, lying, & deception; Mentions of gossip, rumors, & eavesdropping; Mentions of mountain lions attacking people (including envisioning someone being attacked, up to semi-detailed); A few mentions of a kidnapping; A few mentions of children becoming orphans; A couple mentions of an abusive drunk; A couple mentions of throwing up;
*Note: Leith’s father was physically and verbally abusive to him and his mother & sold him to cover a debt; Leith has always believed that his mother didn’t wanted him and killed herself, *Spoilers* but is told in this book that she was actually protecting a man who was helping her when trying to get Leith back; Leith questions why his mother would have stayed with his father, but the other person does not know why *End of Spoilers*; A mention of a mother and baby dying (unsaid if it was in childbirth).
Sexual Content- Touches, Embraces, Hand holding, Flutters, Nearness, & Smelling (barely-above-not-detailed); Remembering touches & embraces (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of courtship, romance, attraction, & liking someone; A mention of a girl sighing over a mysterious guy; Some attraction & the emotions.
-Leith Torren, age 18
-Renna Faythe, age 17
P.O.V. switches between them
330 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
*big sigh* Yeah, so that was a lot of blood and killing and executions and death. Yikes. Definitely not for my fellow readers who can’t stomach a lot of violence. My stomach was turning in a few parts (or more than a few) and I had to try really hard not to visualize what I was reading. Definitely 17+ in my opinion unless the reader had seen a lot of war movies or whatnot, because, there really was a lot of blood and killing in this book especially.
While I found myself a bit bored at times when reading this book at first, it picked up about halfway. The faith content is what is keeping me into this series because Renna’s struggles make perfect sense for what she and her family have gone through and I love seeing Leith’s faith become stronger in intense moments. It’s truly inspiring and made me think about how I would react in these situations of persecution.
Honestly, I’m scared for the rest of the series and who isn’t going to be alive by the end of it. I almost want to binge-read it for answers—prayerfully and hopefully happy answers 😬—but I don’t think I can take the heavy amounts of violence and blood back-to-back. I get the hype for this series already, but it has too much violence for me to broadly recommend it.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
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