There are two types of people in this world. They are either blessed, like Aardriyah's brother or unblessed like Aardriyah, who goes on a journey to find out why she is having nightmares and being hunted. She decides to undertake a journey, taking along an elderly neighbor and a dog. Somehow she is able to stay kind and thinks of others many times over herself.

I had a tough time following along and plan to reread at a later date. I have recommended it to some of my more advanced students.

I was given the opportunity to read this by NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Incredibly confusing and could use a good editor. There were a lot of times I felt like thoughts were half finished or I was just missing something. It made it really hard to get into the book when I was only getting half of the story and the lack of editing made it hard to stay in the story. I think with some work it could be a really interesting story but unfortunately it still needs some work.

The premise was very interesting and i went into it with high hopes.
But something was missing... and it made me a little sad. because i wanted to like it.

Big thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to read and review. I thought this book had a great amount of adventure and friendships. This was a fast paced and enjoyable read. Happy that I finally managed to get to it. The things I loved most about this book was the world and the relationships between some of the characters.

This was a good fantasy. It was fast paced and the twist at the end was marvelous. I found the story to be engaging and the world building was sufficient. The characters were interesting and I care what happened to them. I plan to read more of this series.

A unique and new take on fantasy, I absolutely loved every minute of it. The world building and characters were well thought out.. really looking forward to reading more!

I tried SO many times to get into this book.

It felt very slow, and the copy I had (which is an older E-ARC) had quite a few grammer mistakes.
The world building and concept was interesting but not enough to complete me to keep reading

DnF at 15-20%

Unfortunately this book wasn't doing anything for me. I started skimming at 30% and then finally gave it up at 80%. There was too much going on at once, paragraphs upon paragraphs of descriptions (from outfits to locations to flags), and the main character was whiny and unsympathetic.
The world is pretty much a carbon copy of ATLA, but with less conflict.

Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read the unblessed child.
Was abit slow in places which can make me loose interested unfortunately but managed to pull me back enough to finish.
Characters were enjoyable not sure id read again.

I would like to thank the author and the Netgalley website for allowing me to read this book.

I love the cover of this book which features a young woman with red hair on her back.

You learn right away that there are two kinds of people in the New Kingdom, those blessed by the gods of the four elements and those who are not even worthy of their family name. The latter are undesirable, unloved people better known as the "unwounded".

They include Aardriyah Veros who at 18 years old lives in the shadow of her brother blessed by the water and is trying to survive in a broken and poor nation. She needs to support her father and sister. Except that everything falls apart after two weeks of nightmares where she finds herself chased and kidnapped by a mysterious figure who is fed by a glowing amethyst amulet.

With the help of her neighbor and her dog, she will embark on an epic journey as the unblessed and will try to find out the truth behind her dreams and why she is being hunted.

A book read in one go, so much so that I hooked into the story, so captivating, full of suspense and twists and turns with endearing characters. Can't wait to read the book two.

The Unblessed Child intrigued me when I first came across it. However, I could t make it to the end. I did skim the majority of the book hoping it would grip me and get me interested again. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

ok the plot was very impressive, and interesting, but int he execution there was something that didn't go very well, also I love the pronutiation of the characters, I probably mispronounced them more than once, and I like it, it wasn't bad, but this also wasn't that good.

So this is book 1, it’s a really good read. I really enjoyed reading this story in a realm with old Gods and hidden histories. Ardy hasn’t had an easy go of things and I’m curious to see how things play out for her following the next book. While some parts were slower going than others I really enjoyed the world that the author created for us readers. Thank you Net Galley for this opportunity to read this!

this was a really enjoyable read, the characters were great and I really liked the story from beginning to end. I look forward to more from the author.

The Unblessed Child is a quick read and pulls the reader into a page turning adventure. Easily 3.5 stars, Aardy’s adventure at times seems to go by too fast without realizing you are nearing the end of this first book in a series. The premise is great, people are born blessed with elemental powers, the basic ones we know, but what if there are more? The reader can find some reprieve in getting a final answer at the end of this book, even though you’ve guessed it along the way.

I received this book from NetGalley and this is an honest review.

Let me start with saying that I liked the story. I liked to discover the dreams and what could have been hidden in them, I liked/hated the division between blessed and unblessed. I reckon it is cruel but necessary, it’s the roots on which the story is set. We couldn’t have had story without that setting, even if it makes me really sad to read of what Aardy and all the other unblessed have to go through in their lives. I loved almost every character, from Sonas, to Chastion, from Chidi to Old Man Tame. The only one that didn’t really express herself is Aardy. She is so convinced that she has to push everyone away that she can’t see what she really has. She is so obsessed with self pity that can’t see that her brother loves her, that her friends might have a bad past but changed for her, that her new friends are friends and not someone’s puppets. I get that her life forged her in what she is but I was hoping for a bit of character development in the book. Nonetheless, I liked the story, the set and the ending. I think it’s worthy 4 stars and that the following books will be more action and less background (or at least that’s what I hope).

NOW TO THE WHY I GAVE IT ONLY 2 STARS.

GRAMMAR!!! This book was a pain to read. I am not a native speaker and I do a lot of mistakes but basic english grammar is not something that an author can oversee. I don’t know if this was a book for beta readers, if it was not edited or what is the problem BUT it is not possible to find these kind of mistakes. The difference between its/it’s, me/my, she/her, he/his, queens/queen’s.
For me those are HUGE mistakes that slowed down the reading A LOT. I was constantly annoyed and finished the book just because the story was interesting. And that’s the reason I only gave 2 stars.

To sum up: really good story but grammars sucks.

The book was slow. It's not always a bad thing. But here the heroine was so annoying. Kept whining about being unblessed and useless and worthless and blah blah blah. Like sure, maybe she feels those things, and she is right to feel them. But I don't need to read about it every other page. It just felt really repetitive. And for so much repetition, there was not enough action. Maybe if I wasn't annoyed by the main characters inner struggles I would have appreciated the slow pace, world building and back story more. It just felt more like a #0 of a series, were you already are invested and want to know more about the heroine. But I didn't. So not a fan. I'd like to have more story progression instead. It was just boring.

I cannot wait for the second book!!

No spoilers...

The characters are well developed. There were characters I absolutely fell in love with and others I wanted to shake. The flow of the story was fabulous too. I cannot wait to see where this tale leads!

There are so many things to say that I don’t know where to start
Let’s begin with the world. This is my favorite aspect of this book. Here we have a world full of elemental magic that reminded me a lot of Avatar. There are two categories one the Blessed ones, who can manipulate a natural element as fire, water, earth and air; and there are the Unblessed, simple humans with no power at all. Also we can see the way of thinking of different kingdoms and the way they tell history. I think that was what interested me the most, I loved when the characters fight about which version was the right one.
Now that I’ve talked about the world let’s go with the plot. Aardriyah is a red haired girl with no elemental power. She suffers bullying and insults all her life because of the simple reason of not being blessed by the gods. In this world if you’re an Unblessed is the same as having no value as a human being, you are useless. Aardriyah’s life changes when she starts to have nightmares and is arrested by the royal guard. After she is rescued by her brother, his brother fiance and an old friend. They tell her that her life is not safe on the island anymore, that she is cursed and she needs to hide from the people after her. The way she is being chased is yet not clear, it’s something you are going to discover the same time as her. With all this Aardriyah gets into a ship and starts this adventure and discovers what is happening to her and her nightmares.
I already say the elemental world is the best, and actually that was the reason why I continued with this book. The thing here is that the mystery and the characters were so plain and I couldn't find anything interesting on them. I got bored at some point. The only one I could say I wanted to know about was Chastion, but apart from him no one else, not even the main character.
Another aspect I liked and I was forgetting was the narrator, thanks to this voice we can have a glance to the internal world of all the characters, additionally I say a BIG thank you for not having any romantic relationship. The book by itself with the world and the mystery was enough. I am extremely glad that there wasn’t any forced romance.
On the other hand the fluency of the book was weird. I mean at the beginning it was so slow that I felt I was reading and reading and nothing was happening; then when she was on the ship it was way too much better and then when she is off the ship it’s again slow. Also there were some scenes that were unnecessaries
To sum up, this is such an interesting book with a great and rich world but with a lack of good character. I understand this is going to be a series or so. I hope in the next books we can see a better develop for them 3/5 stars
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Hay muchas cosas que decir acerca de este libro que no sé por dónde empezar.
Iniciemos con el mundo, este es sin duda mi aspecto favorito del libro, aquí tenemos un mundo lleno de magia elemental que me recordó muchísimo a Avatar. Tenemos a los Blessed, que son todos aquellos que nacieron bendecidos con magia de algún elemento, ya sea agua, fuego, aire o tierra; por otro lado tenemos a los Unblessed, que vienen siendo los humanos normales, sin poderes o algo especial. Cada región tiene su cultura, costumbres y sobre todo versiones de la historia. Esto lo hizo más interesante, un evento del pasado contado por personas de distintos lugares e ideas.
Ya que tenemos el mundo podemos hablar de la trama. Aardriyah es una chica pelirroja sin poderes en una familia que domina el agua. Durante toda su vida sufrió de abusos e insultos, ya que el no ser bendecido por los dioses lo volvía una persona inutil y de poco valor en la sociedad. Todo cambia cuando comienza a tener pesadillas y es arrestada por la guardia real. Su hermano, su prometida y un viejo amigo la rescatan y le dicen que está en peligro y que debe abandonar la isla a un lugar seguro. El por que de su arresto o la razon de que su vida esta en riesgo se queda oculto y es algo que va descubriendo en un viaje por mar, donde conocera a sus dos amigos cercanos y aprendera que la discriminación que ella pensaba no era del todo cierta en el verdadero mundo.
Ya dijimos que el mundo elemental es lo mejor de este libro y fue la razón por la que seguí leyendo, quería saber más de este sistema. Lo malo es que el misterio y los personajes no me agradaron tanto, los personajes eran tan planos y sin algo interesante en ellos que me aburrían de vez en vez, el único que llamó mi atención fue Chastion, pero de ahí en fuera ninguno, ni siquiera la protagonista.
Algo que me gustó mucho de este libro fue el narrador, por que gracias a esta voz podemos ver pequeñas partes del mundo interno de todos los personajes y sobretodo que no haya un interés amoroso, el libro se sustenta por sí solo con el misterio y el mundo y agradezco infinitamente que no tuviéramos ahí un romance forzado.
Por otro lado la fluidez del texto es muy extraña, el inicio del libro era tan lento que sentía que pasaba las páginas y nada sucedía, cuando están el barco va tomando mejor ritmo y cuando bajan de él de nuevo se torna aburrido y sin chiste, y es que no logra mantener la tensión durante todo el libro. Hasta había muchas escenas que eran innecesarias.
En conclusión es un libro interesante con un mundo muy bien creado, pero con carencia de personajes, tengo entendido que será una serie, así que espero que todos ellos tengan un mejor desarrollo 3/5 estrellas

Title: The Unblessed Child
Author: R J Kaldanis

Rating 3 out of 5 stars for the stated YA category but if this slated as teen or middle school, then my rating would go to a 4 out of 5 stars - assuming the final version corrected some typos and grammatical issues.

This was not a bad story and I rather enjoyed it overall. However, the copy I read was an early version and did contain some typographical errors and some strange spacing within words. This was also noted as a YA story, and I would disagree with that category for this one - I would say it is more geared towards younger teens or higher middle school level.

The world building is strong and I really enjoyed the elemental magic threaded throughout the story. Aardriyah, the main character, comes across as younger than her stated age in my opinion, in terms of emotional maturity, as do most of the characters, which is why I would slate it towards a younger audience.

In terms of adventure, the story shines as there is plenty of adventure. I also liked how the author worked in themes of class inequality and discrimination, while also weaving in how those concepts are taught and passed down through generations. The importance of trying to overcome those issues is central to the story, which I appreciated.

Overall a good story - although I would have preferred a bit more time devoted to explaining the forgotten magics which are hinted at throughout but only begin to be explained towards the end. I am sure future installments will expand on that more.

Thank you to the publisher, the author and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this selection.