The Blood Keeper by Tessa Gratton
pages: 432
released: August 2012
publisher: Random House
cover love: ♥♥♥
For Mab Prowd, the practice of blood magic is as natural as breathing. It’s all she’s ever known. Growing up on an isolated farm in Kansas with other practitioners may have kept her from making friends her own age, but it has also given her a sense of purpose—she’s connected to the land and protective of the magic. And she is able to practice it proudly and happily out in the open with only the crows as her companions. Mab will do anything to keep the ancient practice alive and guard its secrets. But one morning while she is working out a particularly tricky spell she encounters Will, a local boy who is trying to exorcise some mundane personal demons. He experiences Mab’s magic in a way his mind cannot comprehend and is all too happy to end their chance meeting. But secrets that were kept from Mab by the earlier generations of blood magicians have come home to roost. And she and Will are drawn back together, time again by this dangerous force looking to break free from the earth and reclaim its own dark power. (from goodreads)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 1/18/2013 ON BOOKSLIKESTARS.NET
Review:
The Blood Keeper isn’t a continuation of Silla and Nick’s story from Blood Magic (though they do make tiny cameos; Reese does too but he’s still trapped in the body of a crow, many in fact) but a brand new one that follows the new deacon of the blood witches, Mab Prowd. Arthur, the former deacon, set a task upon Mab to destroy the rose garden on their farm after his death. But instead of getting rid of the roses as promised, she unleashes a curse buried deep in the earth in the form of a life-sized makeshift mud doll, that runs rampid through the woods off the blood land. It runs straight into Will, a local boy from a military family. Will kills Mab’s mud monster but in the process takes some of the curse into himself. Now he’s plagued with headaches, nightmares and bleeding eyes. With the magic that grows within her land and within her family, Mab has to find a way to break the powerful curse that is taking over Will’s body before it kills him.
Tessa Gratton is one of my favorite writers, she writes beautifully and pays extra careful attention to the details in her stories. The Blood Keeper is loaded with intricate and lovely passages about Mab’s skillful abilities in the use of blood magic. The complicated runes, potions and bindings it all embodies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tessa Gratton was a witch herself with the precision in which she writes about the connections between nature, the elements and blood, blending them together to make magic.
That being said…this wasn’t my favorite from the author.
When they say less is more, they weren’t lying. My biggest problem with The Blood Keeper, was the length. Not that long books necessarily bother me. Just as long as it’s progressing the story forward and keeping it interesting. In this case, I felt like I was driving around the same block over and over again, waiting for the scenery to change. It was a long while before Will and Mab meet and begin the process of taking off the curse. And while you are waiting for that to happen, you wander through trees a lot. And watch Mab make tea and use blood to do everything a lot. And watch Will play with his dogs a lot. And have to hear how much the crows flap around (this was overkill for me, they were in every chapter). And many many anecdotes from the past, told from both Mab’s and Will’s POV. Just too much. What this book needed was a trim. The minimum 150 pages should’ve been cut. Because 125 pages to the end of the book was dynamite.
Though getting through The Blood Keeper was, at times, like pulling teeth, I did really enjoy the story. I love books about witchcraft, especially ones with that have to deal with the elements and alchemy. I would’ve given it a higher rating if it hadn’t dragged for most of the book. But I still love the author and happy she has a new book coming out in June called The Lost Sun, blending Norse mythology and alternate worlds.
3.5