Tome Thursday: Gift of Darkness

 

Hello everyone!

 

I'm back with another fresh installment from the Elemental Bloodlines series, which if you haven't discovered or picked it up yet, you absolutely should.

 

It's been a while since I've last read anything about magic which would cover the elements as well as this one does, though I'll admit it occasionally does leave something to be desired and you might struggle on moments.

 

BUT the important thing?

 

Is that these are fun, heartwarming books with an underlying tension that's slowly starting to come to the fore, and I love it.

 

I also love how even though we're seeing repetitions of certain elements, we also get to see slight differences of them and how people use them.

 

Besides, it's not like we have a ton of said elements to begin with, after all.

 

But enough blathering on my side. Because it's time to dance with the darkness and see if we can come out unscathed. Gift of Darkness will tell us all about it!

 

Links to previous related works can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.

 

And yes, yes indeed I have BookSirens to thank for the ARC of this particular book. I've been really into the series since picking it up out of curiosity to learn what it was all about, and it hasn't truly disappointed me since.

 

Gift of Darkness, unlike its two predecessors, doesn't take place in Germany, but rather in Austria, in a small village that has a pretty small community of Teuton witches, and it looks as though that smallness is kind of causing a whole lot of antiquated practices and prejudices to run rampart.

Doro and Amira are half-sisters by adoption, both adopted into the same family, but turns out that isn't going to stop feelings from growing, as they've been in love with each other since their late teens.

Now, remember that prejudice I talked about up above?

The problem becomes two-fold: not only is Amira NOT a witch, and Doro wants to perform a dangerous ritual of gifting her own magic to her to help her ascend, but equally everyone and their grandfather keeps telling Doro that her "unnatural urges" will fall by the wayside if she just finds a nice Teuton man to marry.

As you can PROBABLY tell, this is the age-old argument that has never actually worked. Sexuality isn't a choice we make, and it also isn't the year 1815 when men had to marry women to procreate and continue their family lines, but then kept their male lovers to the side, and vice-versa,

Doro is understandingly mad about this, especially since even her friend from high school, now their community's priest, won't touch the ritual, during which Wuotan - the dark lord or demon spawn or something dark that you really, REALLY don't want to meet walking down the street at night, let's put it that way - usually makes an appearance, and one participant generally dies.

If you recall, this is what happened in Gift of Stone, but Doro does have a backup plan: there's a Black Priest, a servant of the demon himself, who might conduct the ceremony they want.

Amira's initially against it, because she knows someone has to die and that Black Priests have a success rate in this ritual because they choose someone else rather than the participants, but once the stupid old geezer who keeps telling Doro to marry bleeds her (learning secrets comes in handy this way since priests can drink the blood of their supplicants), it becomes a race against the clock.

It's very obviously about more than just Amira and Doro, and might have something to do with Doro's birth mother who was locked away in the asylum that these old priests say is perfectly harmless and only there to keep neurodivergent witches from harming themselves or someone else, but everyone tends to believe that it's literally a disaster. 

Only, it's not under any community's jurisdiction, which means no one has been able to interfere, ever.

And it looks like Doro's mother, conceiving Doro with one of the doctor's there, left a letter explaining everything to her daughter, locked in a special, love-crafted spell that creates a hard crystal around the message, and which the old guys want to get their hands on. Desperately.

So Doro agrees to go to the Black Priest and have him harvest her eggs if he'll perform the ritual and marry her and Amira in return - and she learns that not all is as it seems, because while he may be undead, he also has a funny, snarky side to him and his wife (a mortal witch) very clearly loves him to bits and pieces.

The ceremony is in fact conducted, and Amira takes the element of stone, turning to the heroine from the previous books to learn some tricks, and the girls head on off to get married, again in a ceremony conducted by the Black Priest.

He also warns them that despite the shield cast around the property, he senses the two evil men outside, so they'll probably be ambushed somewhere on the road to their honeymoon spot.

Which is exactly what happens - only, neither of the two oldies anticipate or expecte the Black Priest himself to suddenly pop up, drain one person's blood completely, and terrorize the second one into leaving. With the problem now solved, their marriage consummated, Amira and Doro can focus on the message, which in fact unlocks with Amira now also a witch, and it reveals that Doro's mother was related to their adopted family, that there's a whole lot of nasty happening within the walls of the asylum, and the confessions and evidence have all been spelled like the current letter, hidden in crystals.

So really, onwards and upwards to find who has those crystals now!

I'm so happy to be back in the realm of Teutonica! I'm starting to get the hang of the world now, and I feel like the story has also hit its stride perfectly while also keeping us in suspense as more layers are added to the mysteries surrounding the magical community.

Doro and Amira were lovely protagonists, but I'll admit the Black Priest eclipsed them both. I'm excited to maybe see more of him in the future because - contrary to popular belief - he's got a wicked sense of humour and can be very kind when he isn't busy drinking the blood of his enemies.

I'll admit there's a lot happening in this book that justifies the trigger warnings at the start and some things even made ME go "ew" but ... all the same, the story is wonderfully written and brought to its conclusion.

The author really knows how to create characters to root for, and I'm definitely going to be reading Jasmine's story once it releases.

The magic system is unique (to me) and I hope we get to see more elements come to play as the series advances.

And of course the mystery of the asylum! My bet is on Henning because Zehra's already connected, AND he's been collecting those crystals for years now.

It's going to be so much fun to figure out.

5 of 5 stars because the Black Priest deserves the accolades!

xx

*image not mine

Gift of Fire - Gift of Stone