Cover Image: We Cry for Blood

We Cry for Blood

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Honestly when I read the previous book of this series I was quite disappointed. Many aspects of the story just fell flat for me and there are a lot of plot decisions that just didn't make sense. Reading this third book now it just solidified that this series isn't working out for me and I will very likely drop it all together. I really loved the first book, felt meh for the second, now the third.. I can't really put into words.

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I've got to say I pick the book for the cover not realising it was 3rd book in the series (which duh would of been a good idea it read 1 and 2 but hey I like being awkward)

After catching up with the first two books I finally got around to reading this one over Christmas then haha I forgot to review it.

There is a lot of death and violence as a heads up. which again was expected. But if you enjoyed the first two books you will like this

The 3rs book has so much to talk about but I'll try make this short and sweet and reveal as little as I can. The 3rd book doesn't have as much fighting as the first books but expect some sweet sweet emotional damage. Which makes me question what's going to happen in the 4th book? More emotional damage? More fighting?

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Devin Madson's mastercraftful writing is astounding! The story gets better and better towards the final ending! I love the characters and the dark and gory theme.

Madson will be a autobuy author for me.

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We Cry for Blood is the third instalment in Devin Madson’s The Reborn Empire series. Miko rides at the head of the remains of the Kisian army, using all her cunning and guile to trick her enemies and secure her position as Empress. Rah e’Torin has found temporary safety among the Levanti deserters, having failed once more to win back his Swords. But his presence there threatens the harmony of the camp and pits him against the camp’s leader, an awe-inspiring Horse Whisperer. Cassandra’s time in Empress Hana’s body is running out. Already fragile, Hana’s body is struggling to contain two souls. The arduous journey to thwart Leo Villius’s plan to rule everyone is taking its toll, and neither Cassandra nor Hanna may survive to see success.
At the end of We Lie with Death, we know Leo Villius’s plans for the Empire and how dangerous he is. We Cry for Blood immediately throws us into a tense situation Dishiva, one of Gideon’s Levanti, begins to suspect Leo’s control over Gideon is more than just advisory. Through Cassandra’s storyline, the reader knows Leo can control another person, so we know Dishiva’s suspicions are correct. The more Dishiva tries to help Gideon break free, the more Swords Leo manipulates Gideon into executing. The situation for her and Gideon appears hopeless.
The book continues with the series running theme of women’s place in society. It explores the lingering trauma rape has on the victim and the difficulties women face when trying to change their situation. Dishiva face’s sexual discrimination for the first time in her life and her relationship is tainted by her rape in book 1. However, it was Miko’s storyline that hit me the hardest.
In control of an army, Miko demonstrates cunning and ruthlessness to defeat her enemies, and when she is reunited with Rah, there are opportunities for their relationship to develop further. However, all her efforts in both war and love are hampered by their language barrier and her advisors’ opinions. Miko and Rah’s desire sizzled on the page, but Miko is judged because of her affection. Any headway she makes in changing beliefs is frustrated by old views that he is barbarian and she is only a woman.
The Reborn Empire series has been one of my favourites of the last two years. As a series, it is extremely well-paced with the appropriate number of resolutions to satisfy and keep enough back, so the reader wants more. We Cry for Blood keeps the tension and the stakes high throughout, as you’d want for this portion of the overarching story. Every decision Dishiva makes puts her people at risk, so she must choose between acting and losing people or becoming subvariant to Leo. The fate of a nation sits on Miko’s shoulders, and innocent civilians will die if she makes the wrong decision. Rah must choose between the woman he loves and Gideon, the stepbrother he cares for just as much.
In 2022, the series finishes (why do I have to wait so long), and there is still much to resolve. The one thing I do know is We Cry for Blood has promised us an explosive finale, and with Madson, we’re in safe hands to have our expectations met.

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In many ways, this series hits many of the tropes around current epic fantasy stories, as the origin world takes more from eastern cultures, rather than drawing on classic western civilisation. And there are strong female protagonists – three of them, compared to the single male warrior. What I hadn’t expected was the sheer excellence of the writing that yanked me into the initial book and simply wouldn’t let go.

My firm advice is to get hold of We Ride the Storm and We Lie With Death before tucking into this one, as the narrative timeline follows straight from one book to the next. However, should you choose to ignore my advice, Madson has obligingly added a ‘Story So Far’ foreword, along with a detailed cast of characters. I wish more authors did this with series where the ongoing narrative is vital. Luckily, I didn’t need to be reminded of the previous story, as Cassandra, Rah, Miko and Dishiva are such vivid, memorable characters, even my brain fog hadn’t blurred their various difficulties. I even dreamt about this world – though I have to say that when I woke up and found that I wasn’t in the middle of it, I was very relieved.

The balance between the worldbuilding and the characterisation is skilfully handled, with the prose consistently assured and flowing. The battle scenes leap off the page, full of the bloody violence that is inevitable in hand-to-hand fighting, while the twists and turns of the political scheming kept me turning the pages. These days, this isn’t my go-to genre – I am often alienated by morally compromised characters and the wretched fallout that ensures when the great and the good decide warfare is the only answer. So I’m not quite sure why this series has sunk its hooks so deeply into my inscape – but it certainly has. And my chief complaint is that the third book has finished with not a single major plotpoint being resolved. So I’m going to have to wait before discovering what happens next to Madson’s hapless main characters. Highly recommended for fans of epic fantasy. While I obtained an arc of We Cry for Blood from Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10

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WE CRY FOR BLOOD is the third tense instalment in the Reborn Empire series as alliances fracture and Leo Villius becomes even more dangerous as the extend of his abilities are revealed.

Before this book, the various groups were mostly split into three – the Kisians, the Levanti, and the Chilteans lurking in the background but not really present. They had their own internal disagreements, but generally could be treated as one body with the four POVs on the outside, fighting to be accepted or to have their beliefs be shared. In this book, the groups splinter, and there are suddenly a lot more factions to contend with, making any action one wishes to take much harder. It simultaneously ups the stakes and makes everything harder for the characters.

Leo is such a good villain. He sort of lurks, filling the reader the knowledge that no matter what happens over the actual control of the empire between the other factions, he’s still there to be dealt with. As his abilities/ways of manipulation are expounded upon, he only gets more and more threatening because he always has a plan in place and is so hard to counter – such ruthlessness discarding versions of himself for power!

We stick with the same four POVs this time, and Cassandra is the only one whose path does not touch the others’ physically, but her entanglement with Leo makes her integral to the overall story, which is a really nice change. I appreciated the many actual meetings of the characters and how their decisions were really obviously affecting the others.

Waiting to binge three books in one a very good idea. I am now immersed in this world and now really want the fourth book out to continue the story. Very impressive for a series I was on the fence about at the end of the first book!

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Oh man, I’ve been waiting so long for We Cry for Blood, the third book in Devin Madson’s Epic Fantasy series, The Reborn Empire. So. Damn. Long. And as with the previous books, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an ARC copy, and I can tell you with full confidence, that it was worth all the waiting. The series keeps going strong and I’m pretty sure the finale will blow all of our minds. Now, since this is the third book in a series, I’ll try to keep spoiling the story so far to a minimum, but if you haven’t read the first two books yet (what the hell are you waiting for?!) please proceed with caution. I will also try to be as vague as I can be, but let me tell you, reviewing a book in the middle of a series is just another way of torture. There are so many things I want to talk about, but can’t, because, well, I’d have to kill you and we really don’t want to get into a bloodbath, now do we? I just cleaned out the basement after all… Anyway.

In this installment of The Reborn Empire series, we have all the well-known characters and then some new ones who don’t play any important parts. Yet. But I have a feeling about one in particular, who I hope to see in We Dream of Gods. I mean, it should tell you something about Madson‘s writing when you just fell in love with a character who has like, 2-3 scenes. Then again, knowing all the shenanigans Madson is pulling, it wouldn’t be surprising if this character turned out to be someone unexpected. Well, we shall see. Madson is definitely known not to hold back when it comes to punches and We Cry for Blood definitely didn’t disappoint in that regard.

As for the main cast, Miko, Cassandra, Dishiva and Rah’s storyline picks up where they were left off at the end of We Lie With Death. Miko is trying everything to earn the power of a ruler and to unite Kisia, Cassandra is fighting to survive and to get answers to her problems, Dishiva (who had firmly become my favorite POV) is falling deeper into Leo’s web of lies, while Rah is being stubborn as ever and dreams of a better Levanti future.

There is a *lot* going on, which is not surprising with 4 POV characters who either barely cross each others’ paths or not at all, thus they are all having their more or less distant storylines – which of course are intertwining, even if the characters themselves don’t quite know it yet. All of it packed into a 600+ pages long book. If you followed the series this far, then you have a pretty good idea what to expect from it: death, backstabbery, political games, lies upon lies, agendas clashing with each other, ideals fighting ideals, and a touch of supernatural just to make it more interesting.

The stakes are getting higher with each book and each of the main characters have their own arcs for better or worse. We Cry for Blood deals with themes of self-sacrifice, loyalty, making the right choice even if that’s the harder path but also showing that being right is relative. While one tends to side with the main characters, it also sometimes makes you stop and think about which side might have the right of things. The clash of the Kisian and Levanti cultures also keeps providing a rich background to the events. While Miko has to fight for every bit of respect from the Kisian society, and especially the men, the Levanti has a more “democratic” approach where one is respected based on their qualities and skills rather than everything else.

One thing I kept struggling with – and that’s more to do with my short attention span these days – was that I sometimes found it hard to keep people and events straight in my mind. Especially the Kisian characters and their agendas that gave me trouble. But this is just a very minor quibble on my part. There is a lot going on and when I felt like getting a bit bored by the slower pace at places, then there was something happening that kept me interested throughout. I mostly wanted to know whether I was right about one particular plot twist toward the end, and indeed I was.

If you are hoping to get answers, well, you won’t just yet, but we are getting there. There are some revelations and twists you’ll never see coming, and you might even scream at Madson for some of the choices she made – I know I did. We Cry for Blood is an excellent installment in this richly layered, character-driven and all-around gut-punching series. If the ending of We Cry for Blood is anything to go by, We Dream of Gods will be one hell of a ride to bring the series to an end. And I can’t wait to be along for the ride.

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Huge thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for providing an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.
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Firstly, I am assuming from the ending that there will be a 4th book in this series. Secondly, I cannot wait for it!

What an epic continuation of one of my favourite fantasy series of this year!

Full review to come.

Overall rating: 5/5!

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If you haven't read "We Ride the Storm" (book 1) or "We Lie With Death" (book 2), what have you been doing?! "We Cry for Blood" is the 3rd book in this series ("The Reborn Empire") and lived up to the expectations set by the previous 2. The instant reconnection with the characters and setting was a joy, and shows how well-crafted they are. This series has been fantastic to read, and I'm eagerly awaiting book 4 and the conclusion.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

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Thank you so much to the author and publisher for providing an ebook copy of this book.

I went in with hopes of finding a tale that would hook me and unfortunately after a few chapters I found I just couldn’t get into the story. This one sadly wasn’t for me.

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