An interesting setting. It took a short while to get into it and to warm up to the characters but once I did, I was gripped by them. I absolutely loved that it didn't end the way I thought it would.

Firstly, thank you NetGalley for the advance copy!
Rivennia sets out with such an intriguing premise and wasn't shy about its ambition. The world is thoughtfully constructed, layered with political tension, secretive power structures, and ethical questions that hint at a much larger story unfolding beneath the surface.

The start had me guessing, I genuinely wasn’t sure where everything was heading. While the premise itself is compelling, the execution didn’t always land in the early chapters. The pacing I thought got good about 30% in. I appreciated the use of multiple POV's in bringing different story lines together for the plot, however at a point the frequent shifts in perspective also made it difficult at times to connect with the characters, and I occasionally had to double check whose POV I was reading. It kind of blended in (I think at the introduction of the dinner and the game of wagers)

Even so, it honestly was a good read with a lot to admire of Jaime Urencios' world. If you enjoy politically charged, genre blending fantasy with dystopian hints you will likely find a lot to appreciate. Rivennia shows a strong foundation and an author with interesting ideas, and I’ll be recommending it to my book club once it’s released as the premise alone makes for an interesting discussion.

I am not joking when I say that Rivennia A Game of Wager is maybe the best debut novel I have ever read. Jaime Urencio, this new appeared on scene author, has been capable of channeling his studies inside the biotechnological sector into a dystopian story asking us: is it right to modify our genetic library? Can we truly call it evolution?
A matter with which our three protagonists are going to struggle, focusing on very different positions but all united with a single objective: avoiding that the despair linked with these body changements could help the uprising of a new social class and race, superior to the human one and linked with secret cults around death wagers and hidden training camps for an army made only of empowered beings.
The thing with Rivennia A Game of Wagers is that it is actually surprising. The style of Urencio mixes the personal description of events, and the emotional connection with the feelings of the characters, with some chronicle moments in which the most gruesome and shocking moments are represented with a glacial recounting which is actually spine-chilling. I am a person who rarely becomes anxious while reading, but some of the heaviest passages of Rivennia made me breathless. Despite the consciousness you are going to read a type of dystopia made of class fights, disparity, political choices and situations, some body horror and gothic elements arrives as punches on your stomach, and the easiness with which the main characters can be manipulated, changed, and technologically chosen to be discarded from society has a surgical precision you would expect only from a legend of the medium. Rivennia proposes some little ingenuities, as for example the disappearance of some core figures in the last part of the book and an ending which maybe is a bit too open, requiring a sequel Jaime Urencio is already writing. In any case, you can pardon these little things when you are in front of a prodigy like this. Don’t miss Rivennia A Game of Wagers, on Amazon since 14th of February, and thanks a lot for the ARC in exchange for this honest review!


FINAL VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐