About

Bloodline is the 9th book in the Cradle series written by Will Wight.

Bloodline book cover

Blurb

It’s time to go back home.

In the years since Lindon left Sacred Valley, he has attained power beyond anything his family thought possible. Now he’ll have to put those powers to the test, because a Dreadgod is on its way.

Lindon and his allies set out to evacuate the valley before the arrival of the Wandering Titan, but their sacred arts are weakened by an ancient curse. They’ll have to persuade the squabbling inhabitants of Sacred Valley to leave behind their home and set off into the outside world.

But it has been a long time since Lindon left, and more has changed than he realized.

He has always sought power to save his family…but now he might be too late.

Review

I'm finding it very difficult to rate/review this book 😔 😔. Since binge reading the first 5 Cradle books in 2018, I've been reading subsequent books on the day of release (sometimes planning ahead to keep my schedule free). My first reaction for Bloodline, despite finishing the book much faster than usual, was a bit of disappointment.

Fan reactions and theories have helped me better understand the events that took place in Bloodline. But there's still a bit of lingering disappointment. In an ideal world, instead of delaying, Will would've taken his break when he needed and however long it took to recover. I feel this book suffered a bit because of the delay, but I'm happy that we got a book to read at all.

With so much happening in a short amount of time and the breakneck pacing, a re-read (and future books) seems necessary to fully appreciate the events of Bloodline. There is a self-contained main plot, but this book is very much a transitional one too. The end game has started and we got plenty of exciting hints. This was also the darkest book of the series so far.

One of the fan theories proposed was that the next book would be similar to Ghostwater in setting/plot and I hope that turns out to be true.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

What others are saying

Selected lines from Karthak_Maz_Urzak's spoiler review on /r/Fantasy:

Gawd damn did it hold me in a tight grip.

Were there headscratchers? Some, but minor in my opinion.

This book was...bleaker than the rest. It's not quite "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention" territory, but Mr. Wight slapped the reader in the face in this book more times than in the rest of the series combined.

To quote the poets: this was some good shit.

From Benny Hinrichs's review on goodreads:

Click to view spoilerDefinitely a good book. Definitely not the best Cradle book. Some scenes I wish had been longer, and some I wish had been shorter. It felt like the reunion with Orthos didn't get enough time, and we spent a little too much time convincing the clans. We could have had one more scene with the Wei clan elders. The cosmic scenes, e.g. where a planet gets cut in half, are sort of too big to really appreciate. They don't feel much grander than fighting the dreadgod. I think because they aren't built up in the same way, so the sense of scale is lost. A lot of good scenes in this book, just wanted a few changes to make it flow better and hit all the satisfaction points.

Bingo

/r/Fantasy/ 2021 bingo categories:

  • Set in Asia
  • Found Family
  • Published in 2021
  • Self-Published