'Blood and Silk' is written in a scene formate, morsel's of well written parts, it blends together okay, that has every character in but Micah about the only main recurring character that's absent and too bad she doesn't have a bigger role.

POV – 3rd person, multi character, often omni-present
Would I read it again – Yes!
Genre – LGBT, Fantasy, Serial, Historical, Coming-of-Age, Queer
Content Warning – mild violence, sexual situations, adultery/cheating, prostitution
Orientations – MM, MF, FF



** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **



I love the world building of this series, and the talented writers who bring it all together, but I was left heartbroken by the events of Season One and I'm hopeful that Season Two will at least offer some relief from that. I'm coming straight into this, just an hour after finishing Season One, so it's all fresh in my mind. There are still the infrequent issues of editing mistakes, changes of tense that don't always make sense, as were in Season One, but the recurring issue of font change has been eliminated, which is a relief.

Because of the format Netgalley sent, or perhaps because of how Kindle interprets them, the formatting for the first half of this series of ARC's was terrible. The documents had either one or two lines then a line of gapping, repeated throughout and it wasn't only hard on the eyes, but made it more difficult to follow in terms of flow. The second half were much better formatted.

~

Episode 6: Blood and Silk, by Mary Anne Mohanraj

★★★★☆
Pages: 42

Things just aren't going right for anyone in Riverside, are they?
From Rafe, Ixkaab, and Diane, things are beginning to unravel and fall apart. I only hope that Honore will find her father, save him, or at least lead Rafe to him that he can be saved in time. If only they could work together, Honore would get the access Rafe can't, and they could whisk Will off to some country estate beside Honore and her family, where they could be happy, Rafe could open his school, and neither of them ever had to see Diane again, giving her the duchy like she wants.
Ixkaab's problem was almost inevitable, as things had been building in this direction for too long already. I'm a bit disappointed to see that there's no progress in the stolen supplies plot and that neither Micah, Joshua, nor Florian and Shade, have been mentioned for a while. It makes me wonder what they're up to

Favourite Quote

“That's what his life had become, a bad dream, from dawn to dusk.”

I feel like it's time the story picked up pace and stopped re-tracing ground that is already covered. Some plots gain a little momentum here, but the new information / events basically contribute / confirm what we already know (that Tess and Kaab are not well suited and that family / outsider status is their defining conflict; that William is gone and that makes Rafe sad; that Diane is plotting to gain the duchy in her own name). Sadly, the ways in which Diane goes about it in this chapter depends on chance encounters more than skill. Getting insight into Diane's current squeeze's thoughts was pretty much a waste of time. (And I have no idea why Kaab's family, supposedly great spies and traders, were surprised by her indiscretion, when we have hardly seen her be discrete.)

I didn't much enjoy the style, it made this installment seem hurried and confusing. The only bright moment was Honora's appearance (finally!) but I also felt like it could have been written more effectively.

I read this installment courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.