Eighteen year old Aardriyah Veros lives is a time and place where you can be blessed or unblessed She is considered one of the unblessed. In other words she is unworthy of a family, or of being recognized as even being an individual person. She is basicly a nobody in a realm where recognition is everything. To make matters worse her brother has been adopted by the royalty of the realm.
She has very vivid dreams that indicate that maybe she is more that an unblessed.
She will try and discover the validity of these dreams.
Interesting read. Definitely entertaining.

This was a good read!

From the get-go I was into the story. I’ve seen others comment about the dialogue structure not being clear and so I wanted to comment on that my copy of the book was not the final draft so there were a few structure issues that confused me BUT for the most part I was able to follow the dialogue.

I found that the world building and the intro of characters wasn’t dull or drawn out which makes it hard to get through at times but that wasn’t the case here.

Aardriyah faced with a lot adversity and she’s a product of her upbringing, but her dad and sister help keep her from becoming a bitter person. The one thing that I would’ve liked, is for Aardriyah to be more assertive when things started going wrong and she wasn’t given explanations/answers right away. I get that it was meant to drive the plot forward and we do get the answers at the end of the book.

Book 1 does a good job setting up the series. It leaves a lot of things to be answered and ends in a cliffhanger on what Aardriyah will be doing next!

I definitely recommend this book! And will be waiting for Book 2.

There are two types of people in The New Realm: those who are blessed by the gods of the four elements and those who are unwanted, unloved, and are simply known as The Unblessed.

Eighteen-year-old Aardriyah Veros is living in the shadow of her powerfully water blessed brother and little sister. With her elderly neighbor and newfound canine friend in tow, our unblessed child sets out on an epic journey to uncover the truth behind her dreams.

I hesitated for this review between 3 and 4 stars. If I could I'd do 3.5.
This is a good book, very intriguing, and the world is described well, with the divisions, etc explained. I enjoyed the concept, and even though I was admittedly reading a galley, the constant misspellings made me a little crazy. When nothing grows, something is BARREN, not BARON. I saw that word used a lot and misspelled every time. ..
I also felt that the action was a little confusing at times.
As I got closer to the end, it was apparent this is meant to be a series, and we would get little to no resolution. While I don't mind series books, I thought originally this was a stand-alone.
I also personally prefer series books where the end has some resolution, and they can be read either in series or stand-alone.

This series is clearly intended for YA readers, and I found it hard to believe the protagonist was 18. She comes off much younger to me, maybe due to her "woe is me attitude". I don't know if I would continue with the series or not. I did love the Fox sidekick, named Kit for the Japanese word for fox, Kitsune.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Very good book, I didn’t do anything but read this book all day. I can’t wait for the next book I hope Aardriyah shows all the people that thought she was nothing and worthless just how amazing she is. I can’t wait to find out what happens next with her brother and the princess. This book keeps you engaged and the world building is awesome not sure I would want to live in it because I would definitely be an unblessed. I recommend this book

I am a little bit in love with this book, I loved Aardriyah so much, she was a fantastic character, so relatable, it’s heartbreaking and she is so easy to empathise with her, I loved her strength and pride despite how she was treated. The writing itself is good but needs a little work and it could be even more special, but it doesn’t take away from the great story.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

This was a really interesting read! I love the premise and the way the story flows. I love Aardy's relationship with her siblings, father, and Teme. I love the friendships she finds throughout the story.
For the most part the pacing was really good, with the exception of one part from about 70% to about 85% where the pacing sort of fell off, but it picked back up for the end and ended well!

The world-building was very well done, and the writing was pleasing to read, I really enjoyed this book!

The Unblessed Child was an enjoyable book. I liked the world-building and magic system a lot and the premise of the story was intriguing. At the same time, the pacing and some other elements of the plot needed work. it was difficult for me to connect with many of the characters. It’s a quick read and a good fantasy story, so I might read the sequel when it comes out to see what happens next.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story! I honestly didn't know what to expect when I was granted a copy to read from Netgalley a while back. It definitely took me by surprise and I found I couldn't put the book down! Whilst I did come across a number of writing issues, I was able to look past them as the author knew how to pull you into the story with unexpected twists and surprising characters throughout Aardriyah's journey across the realm. A journey filled with elemental magic, interesting characters, mythical beasts, and a secret dark curse that begins to unravel.

The characters were well told throughout, even without much of a backstory. Our main protagonist, Aardriyah or 'Riyah', is easy to read and understand, an unblessed teenager who has lived a life of bullying, shunned and treated like an unwanted outcast by those around her who themselves are blessed with the water magic of their realm. She can't help but feel isolated, even around her blessed family who try their best to make her feel safe and wanted. She has traits of a fire blessed with her long red hair, but no powers to speak of. She's easy to sympathise with to an extent, but it doesn't help that she pushes others away, feeling like she isn't worth their time.

Chastion was an interesting individual, adopted into the royal family at a young age for his powerful water abilities, destined to rule the kingdom. Whilst he lived the life of luxury, he was still determined to remain close to his family but couldn't help the distance growing between them as his duty consumed more of his time. The result being the broken relationship he now had with Riyah. His need to keep her safe with him on their journey whilst trying to build up the connection they once had was sweet.

Old Man Teme, whilst he was an extremely interesting character, was also annoying. Why with all the secrets? Was it really all necessary? I understand his protective need to keep Aardriyah safe with knowing what she truly was, but when she discovered the truth and he still kept everything he knew from her, it just grew tiresome. It's a shame he wasn't portrayed as a younger character, it would have given him a more appealing purpose in her life for the reader.

I enjoyed reading the elemental magical aspects of the story which kept the journey colourful and exciting and how each faction was separated by it with clear traits such as hair colour. However, I would have liked to have seen it bring a bit more personal depth to the characters surrounding Aardriyah rather than just their appearance. The blessed were only separated by their elemental ability of fire, earth, water and air, rather than their own individual creativeness with the powers themselves.

'The air blessed were flying large kites in the sky, of varying colours and shapes. They soared above the ships, twinkling in the sunlight and casting magnificent blues, greens, yellows and reds onto the decks beneath. Some water blessed were shooting streams of water in front of and between the ships, making shapes of animals great and menacing. Aardriyah marvelled at how talented and creative all the blessed were, she had never seen such a use of the elements and struggled to know where to look, or perhaps it was because everywhere she looked people were smiling, unblessed and blessed talking as if now boundaries or discrimination ever existed.'

The plot of the story kept me on my toes, the author did a fantastic job at setting the scene along with it whether it was the royal household of Veros, flashbacks into the past through Riyah's dreams, sailing across the realm on a grand ship, or walking the wastelands filled with volcanic ash, it was all very detailed and descriptive, you could really place yourself in the scene along with the rest of the characters.
Whilst I was intrigued with the mysterious stranger with the amethyst crystal following her, I didn't feel like there was a lot of urgency or fear to keep me interested in what was really after our main protagonist and why which bothered me a little but there was enough to keep the journey interesting along the way.
Unfortunately I ended up having too many unanswered questions by the end of the book which ended on a cliffhanger. I'm not sure when the next book will be released, but I'm going to keep an eye out!

I enjoyed the originality of this book! I think if you like Sci-fi and fantasy you’ll really enjoy this:

Really original storyline with a huge kingdom divided into 4 smaller kingdoms each representing an element. I love all the mystery surrounding the main character and how, even though she is supposedly an unblessed(which means she has no magic), there are hints that she may have a rare power. The story jumps a little and is repetitive sometimes but still definitely worth reading.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book!

I really, really, really wanted to like this book. I kept trying through out the whole story to connect with it and just... couldn't. I found myself frustrated with the main character and her reactions to things constantly. The main idea is a good one, and there are many interesting aspects to the story as a whole! However, I just did not enjoy it. I think it would be good for a younger, maybe middle school aged crowd, possibly border line YA. Just not for me.

I really loved the concept of the story, it’s very interesting with all the elemental magic and an unblessed main character in a world of magic, but at the end, I didn’t like Aardriyah, the main character, that much...
The story has a lot of potential, but also some clichés that you can see in many YA fantasy novels, this made some parts of the reading predictable. As this is the first book in a series, I hope that the author develop that potential in the next books.
In conclusion, an entertaining reading recommended to fantasy books lovers.

Note: I loved that the author included the pronunciation of the characters names at the beginning of the book, it was very helpful.

I first want to say that I loved this book that when I wasnt reading it I was thinking about it. The author does such an amazing job at world building and I love how bright and vivid the colors are that she uses to describe everything. I connected with Aardriyah so much, the friendship in the book and the representation was amazing as well. Thank you so much to netgalley and also the author RJ Kaldanis for giving me the chance to read and review this book, I cant wait to read the rest of the series.

This book managed to make fairly basic topics unique and intriguing. It is set in a world where there are four common "blessings", fire, earth, air, and water. People with these blessings can manipulate that object. Aardriya, the main character, was born into an extremely blessed family, her brother was even adopted by the royal family due to his skill. Aardriya, however, doesn't have one of these blessings, and spends most of her time on her home island being taunted for her red hair or cleaning out toilets. Then, all of a sudden, people start hunting her. The Unblessed Child is a fast paced fantasy that follows Aardriya on her journey to escape the hunters and find answers as to why they were following her.
I really enjoyed this book. Every time that I thought I knew what was going to happen, there was a twist or something entirely different occurred. It is a pretty quick and not too heavy read, which is really refreshing. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would defiantly recommend it to all fantasy lovers.

Personally, I found this story to be very cliche for the YA fantasy setting.
So, we have Aardriyah - a girl with red hair who is born in a water kingdom and therefore stands out.
Her brother is prince - so many questions as he’s not a “biological” heir but rather chosen.
She’s looked down upon by the rest of society because she’s different. She keeps her head up but come on, that’s bound to really hurt you internally when you’re shunned by everyone.
However, when she’s told to run away and rather than asking questions, no - demanding questions, she just kind of...runs!
If this was a middle grade book, I’d have absolutely rated higher.
The author had such a fantastic idea and I still think she has a fantastic idea but I wish it was more...mature?

*ARC provided for an honest review- many thanks for allowing me into your world*

Please note that these are only my personal opinions and are not a reflection on the author or anyone who loves this book.

The Unblessed Child: 3+ stars for Middle School, 2.5 stars for its stated category of Young Adult

I am finding a problem in current novels published for YA & Teens: novels that seem a bit too simple, or simpleton, for today’s worldly teen mind, nevertheless categorized as YA. Teens of today have seen so much, perhaps too much, and can be bored easily. I know, as a parent of young teens. Teens these days are watching Stranger Things, Riverdale, vampire stories, witch stories, violent aggression seeking justice, dystopian worlds, and more. It doesn't need to be supernatural, but it does in fact need to be startling somewhere along the line. It needs to tug at their insides, cause a reaction in their gut, light the fire in their belly. *That* is YA — stories with tension and emotion, stories that help teens figure out who they are and where they fit in compared to other teens, and hopefully even better than those TV series stated above, stories that help them truly question morality and societal structure and why-is-the-world-falling-apart.

At bare minimum though, YA should be complex and surprising enough to entertain a young still-developing worldly mind, a mind constantly entertained by endless video clips on social media. YA should have some surprise, or better, big shock, or perhaps even better from a parental point of view, YA should provoke the big huge hard questions about world and self. Yes it can simply entertain with life in a fairy land, but it is doubtful it will actually do so without hitting some of these other loud notes in structure and idea.

So again I find myself saying here is a book that is perhaps better for Middle School than YA. The plot is simple, cliché even, and the emotional depth is lacking. Yet the world portrayed in this novel is quite colorful, many details enriched, as the main character runs through event after event. But though much is happening, little is happening.

This is the sort of writing that streams through many things done, details drawn with seconds of pencil sketching instead of deep washes of color. I feel I am on a moving train only catching fleeting glimpses, and all the while missing the depth that could have been portrayed.

Yet the idea is interesting enough: elemental magic, divided into family lines and thus dividing the culture, à la Divergent, but without the intense tension. There is a dark menacing character, foreshadowed first in dreams, but the tension is minimal.

200 pages doesn’t allow as much room for depth as I expected for the category however. For a 200 page book, action must be met fairly soon in the story, and the focus must be tight to attain the arc of action and tension and character development that would make the story great. Here that does not happen. That’s another reason I’d give a quick edit and gear this younger.

For a younger audience it is a delightful read, fresh enough, quirky enough, interesting enough to hold attention and cause what fiction may: a dreaming, ideas of adventure and being more than what one is born to be.

I don’t recommend this for adults, nor older teens, and I probably do not recommend this for young teens. I do however recommend this highly for middle school.

Diverse character references, tolerance espoused.

Love the cover design, 5 stars for that art.

My star system:
5 stars: I will absolutely read this again, or I cannot get this out of my head as I ruminate over all the layers of meaning, the beauty of the writing, the completely captivating plot

4 stars: Really good, it kept me interested, but I probably won’t read it again

3 stars: I won’t read it again, it had some interesting qualities to the plot or writing that kept me going, or the plot was original enough that I had to see how it ended, but it was missing something that could have made it great, such as emotional depth that hooked me in irrevocably, or a huge character arc, or moments of immense tension

2 stars: Big challenges with writing or plot or character arcs, will not recommend nor read further if a series

1 star: How did this get published?

Synopsis
Aardriyah is an unblessed girl in the world of blesseds, which means she is powerless and is considered to be from the least important group on the social ladder of her society. While her brother a powerful blessed is adopted as the heir apparent prince, she has to battle her inferiority complex and the horrible nightmares that plague her. In a heavily biased society, somebody is out to kill her, an unblessed nobody, Why? Will the forced adventure she has to take to escape her hunters give her answers about herself and her strengths? forms the crux of the story.

What appealed to me?
The story. This story has immense potential. Though I was not impressed with the ending, this story showed promise and this being just the first part in a series, I am guessing the intrigue value of the story will only increase with each installment.

The Magic system. I liked how society is categorized based on elemental magic i.e. air, water, earth, and fire. This magical system has a lot of potential for action and manipulation. Though this book has not completely leveraged this potential, I am hoping we would see more of it in the next installments of the series.

Writing. The writing was natural and fluid. It was not too prosaic or poetic. It was just enough to get you into the story and not be distracted by the techniques of plotting and writing.

Positive sexuality. I liked how natural the LGBT representation in this novel was. There are lesbian and gay characters but it's so natural that you might even miss it in the story if you would like to. It's not the in-your-face activism/representation for the sake of representation kind of narration and that was appealing.

What didn't appeal to me?

Characters. I especially found Aardriyah's portrayal immensely irritating. Yes, she was treated badly but isn't there an expiry date for victim cards? How long will somebody carry around the placard of victimhood around them? The way she treated her brother, the way she carried around her jealousy and immaturity as some cloak of honor was supremely unappealing. I wished desperately for somebody (in this case the author) to knock some sense into her.
I liked the dog and Rachida, but the rest of the characters were lukewarm at best.

Conclusion
I cannot say this story was memorable or unique. But, I enjoyed reading it, I was not bored or disinterested and that's a good enough reason for me to like a book. I am looking forward to reading the next installment of the series.

While I appreciated the red headed main character (I am also a redhead) I couldn't get into the plot of the story.

The start of an exciting journey for our lonely Unblessed Aardriyah. In a world full of 'Blessed', who have power over the elements, poor Riyah has been told she isn't good enough her whole life, but now will be her time to shine.
Looking forward to more in this series!

I DNF this book, but I read most of it.

The plot is okay (though very cliché within YA literature), but in my case there are two major problems with this novel: the main character and the writing.

I really sympathised with the main character at the beginning, because she is a very solitaire and tormented girl. She's had to endure a lot of things due to the fact that she lives in the Water kingdom and she is not only unblessed, but also everything that Water people despise. She has red hair, tanned skin, dark eyes... as if she belonged to the Fire people. You can tell that she does not fit among the White Walkers of this book and they can too. Add to the poor girl's luck that she's the sister of the beloved and powerful Prince of the Water kingdom and, as I mentioned, that she is Unblessed. In other words, that she is considered ordinary and zero useful for the Kingdom. Despite all of that, she is strong and lives her life with pride. She is a kind and loving daughter and sister, and yet when she is suddenly told that she has to get on a boat and run away, she complies. Excuse me? Nobody gives her a miserable explanation. She is kidnapped and forced to go who knows where, which means leaving behind her father and little sister, and she obeys. I'm sorry, but I would ask A LOT of questions, otherwise I'd rather stay and check who is trying to kill me! I didn't like her attitude. She became a puppet and I hate that. She simply resigned instead of trying to find answers on her own.

Then there's the writing. The grammar was a bit messy (long sentences with tons of adjectives) and sometimes there were even some mistakes. I tried not to pay attention to that, but in the end these little things put me off. I'm not saying that it's a bad book, but I do think it should be revised. Maybe I would've liked this book some years ago, when I hadn't read as many YA novels as I have now, because the plot did not offer me anything new.