Review: Heart of Mist

Hello people! How are you? And how are your reading going? I am in a bit of a slump, both a reading one and a blogging one. I am not feeling so energetic in the last period and it seems like I can’t find the time, or the right mood, to blog. And lately, to read too… the time is there, but the mood not so much. And so I went in another hiatus and I am slowly crawling back to blogging.

But today I am here to write a review for a book that I received from the author and that I really liked. I am a little bit late with this one, but it was the best I could do so… sorry about that!

A big thank you to the author. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Heart of Mist
Series: The Oremere Chronicles #1
Author: Helen Scheuerer
Page count: 487
Date publication: August 30th, 2017

In a realm where toxic mist sweeps the lands and magic is forbidden, all Bleak wants is a cure for her power.

Still grieving the death of her guardian and dangerously self-medicating with alcohol, Bleak is snatched from her home by the Commander of the King’s Army, and summoned to the capital.

But the king isn’t the only one interested in Bleak’s powers.

The leader of an infamous society of warriors, the Valia Kindred, lays claim to her as well, and Bleak finds herself in the middle of a much bigger battle than she anticipated.

Heart of Mist is the gripping first book in The Oremere Chronicles, a fantasy series of epic proportions. 

 

If you read the synopsis of this book you can make an idea of what to expect from the reading, but I can assure you that you would find so much more between those pages!
I think it won’t be an organic review, with a logic to it, so I excuse myself in advance, but there are a lot of great things in this book and I hope to do it justice!

The first thing first, Bleak. She’s the MC, and she is a girl who possesses magic in a world in which magic is sort of not allowed (this is a simplistic explanation, but go with it for now!). And she’s poor too. An orphan without meaning if not stealing a little here and there. But she wants to find a cure for her magic. She doesn’t want it and she sees it as a curse. But it seems like there is no cure and so she finds the only way that she can to stop it, in a way. She drinks. A lot. It’s not that I have a penchant for drunken characters, not at all, it’s this is a really controversial choice and a hard one, because it’s not so easy to create an MC who is a drunken, especially if we are not talking about some old veteran or some damned soul, but a girl. And the author did really good with it, too, because she did an accurate job and present to us a realistic character. I appreciate this daring choice.

Another really great thing about this book is the Valian’s place. Their land is wonderful and so lush and luxuriant that you would feel the need to go and find the nearer forest to try and immerse yourself in such a vibrant and green place. I wasn’t a big fan of the Valian in general, to be honest, but their home is something that you can find in a fairy tale and I loved it.

But there are a lot of other good things in this book: I loved the idea of the toxic mists and I want to learn more about them (also, I can’t wait to read the next book. I really hope my reading slump would end soon!), and I liked the story, captivating, even if the pace is not homogeneous, the world building, that is interesting and some of the secondary characters: I loved Fiore, and I really really hope to see more of him around, and I liked Bren, while I liked and disliked Henri in the same measure, and it’s not that she is a bad character, all of them are really well developed and characterized, but I had these mixed feeling about her.

and .75

So, that’s all for today, people! Did you read this book? Or have you heard about it? Let me know! 

Happy reading!
S.