"The Chameleon with a Sword" by B.L. Logan is a riveting fantasy adventure that immerses readers in a world where shifting identities and swordplay intertwine in a thrilling narrative. Logan's vivid world-building and dynamic storytelling create a compelling backdrop for this tale of intrigue, courage, and transformation.

The protagonist, a chameleon-like figure capable of changing their appearance, is a fascinating and multifaceted character. Logan expertly delves into themes of identity and self-discovery as the protagonist navigates a labyrinth of political machinations, hidden agendas, and personal vendettas. The swordplay scenes are meticulously crafted, delivering pulse-pounding action that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

Logan's prose is both eloquent and accessible, making it easy to become absorbed in the richly detailed world and the complex characters that inhabit it. The plot is well-paced, with a perfect balance of suspense, adventure, and character development. Each twist and turn of the story reveals new layers of intrigue, ensuring that readers remain engaged from beginning to end.

"The Chameleon with a Sword" is a must-read for fans of fantasy and adventure. B.L. Logan has created a captivating tale that combines the thrill of combat with the deeper, more introspective journey of understanding oneself. This novel is a testament to Logan's storytelling prowess and leaves readers eagerly anticipating what lies ahead in this enchanting world.

Brilliant and so much fun to read
Loved the cover, characters and the world building. Highly recommend this book

This was a complex, fast paced YA Fantasy.

The characters were well developed, although due to the pace of the story the world building was let down at times.

A good mix of Action and Magic.

It was difficult to follow due to the number of characters, hence only 3 stars.

Interesting plot and characters, worldbuilding and magic, but the length took away from the pacing and engagement.

I really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were great and I really enjoyed the plot from beginning to end.

The Chameleon With a Sword follows a sixteen year old girl named Leena who spends her days earning money in illegal underground fencing matches. When her mother decides she wants to move someplace else, they get into a car crash and when Leena wakes up, she finds that her mother has disappeared. She soon finds herself in a strangers house, who claims to be an old friend of her family and takes custody over her until they are able to find her mother. Leena's new life is not what it seems and she needs to learn to navigate through a life of deceit and magic.

A good fantasy story from two opposing points of view. An interesting storyline with alot of fast pace action and adventure. Thank you for providing me with a copy!

I tried to read this book twice and both times I found myself unable to finish it. The world is confusing and not explained well. The characters aren't very compelling. While I liked the idea of a sword-wielding leading lady with mysterious powers, Leena wasn't very likeable. Overall, I think the idea for this book was simply too complex and the author struggled to balance not over-explaining and still making sense. I have not posted a review of this elsewhere.

The Chameleon with a Sword was a really interesting read. It was fast-paced, a great fantasy / Sci-Fi read. I loved the characters and the storyline.
Thank you Net Galley for the E-book

(Rant to begin, ending on a high note)

I'm so sad. I'll just jump right in and say, this book left me so disappointed. Don't get me wrong, there were so so many things that I loved about this book and for a long while I honestly thought it was going to be 5 stars, til the end. This is a very long book and I feel like I invested so much time and energy into these characters and this world, I truly cared about them and what was going to happen. It was such a long, emotional, bouncy, sometimes tiresome, roller coaster ride - with virtually no pay off.

I can't say much here without spoilers but I think everyone who has read this book knows the true relationship between Leena and Mordecai.. and I just wanted him to figure it out! I wanted there to be that moment right at the end, where he had an epiphany - yes! I wanted to see his reaction and feel his heartbreak and betrayal. Everything could have still gone exactly as it was written, with Leena still being none the wiser and Mordecai doing what he did and Noxden (trying my best to be cryptic). It's all I wanted. I wanted all that work to finally lead to something that had meaning (at least for me personally). Instead we were given the most teeny tiny subtle hints that maybe, just maybe in the future, he might finally see the truth. As others have mentioned, the story is left wide open, so it may or may not be continued.

A lot of the second half was very repetitive, with essentially the same scenes on a loop with the cat and mouse game becoming a bit tedious. Overall, I thought the writing was very good, but the action scenes felt rather clunky, as if they had been written in bullet point form. You also bounce back and forth quite a lot between past, present and different POVs (getting a bit dizzy).

I just feel like, after all that, it was for nothing. Right now, I'm tired and I don't know if I feel invested enough to read a second book, if there ever is one. So much time and energy has already been spent just trying to understand the world, which again as mentioned by many others already, I still don't fully understand. In saying that, I did love the world, but it's like missing that final puzzle piece that brings it all together.

Ending with the good stuff.. and there is a lot! I really thoroughly enjoyed this book, which I guess is what makes my disappointment even more apparent. Aside from the confusion, as mentioned, I really did love the world. I love the concept of the duality, opposing forces, the light and dark, one can't exist without the other, all that I really liked. I thought the main plot was very well done, I enjoyed following the journeys of the 2 protagonists and the split pov (though I personally would've liked a lot more pages from Mordecai's).

Which brings us to the shining stars of the book, the characters. Superb! Absolutely so well written, I am gushing! Stealing the words from another reviewer, the characters are all so imperfect and flawed, which makes them wonderfully - human. Yes! I had my favourites (Mordecai, Aidan and Zacharias), but each and every one of them was so fleshed out and defined. They each had their own clear voice and morals, intentions, motivations, struggles.. bringing a unique dynamic to the story and the relationships. It was raw, it was pure, it really was just fantastic.

Ms Logan clearly has a flare for creating believable characters and relationships through emotional and relatable storytelling. Aleena, damn girl, I feel your hurt and the betrayal. It was so real.

The kind of immersive experience I was able to share with the characters in this book is why I read! So, thank you.

The ending wasn't on the same level as the beginning. Where I found the beginning very strong, the ending was a bit weak. After the 50% mark, the story was constantly the same: Leena and gang get found by Mordecai, a chase ensues, they escape but someone gets hurt (but not enough to die), and Leena gets mad at others because they kept secrets from her. Then the circle starts again. It just became old after a while.

I did enjoy the other characters (that were not Leena) a lot. The banter between all of them was very fun to read. The magic system and the worlds were superconfusing, and it took me a very long time before I had even a little bit of an idea as to what was happening and how the world(s) worked. I still can't say for certain how the powers work, and what the big difference is between the Duro and the Noxim.
I will give credit to the romance! It was a nice slow-burn, and a (sorta) enemies to lovers. Those happen to be the only romances that I enjoy.

Not amazing, not horrible. Just okay.

So, I liked this book, but I can’t say that I loved it. The main reason I am not super excited about it is that I felt it could have been condensed or even split up into a duology. It took me forever to get through this story, mainly because I found myself getting lost in obscure things that in the end were really not all that important and missing bits that could have helped me make sense of the story.
The author built an incredible world, but that world-building was also confusing at times. It seemed dystopian at first, but then Leena ends up in the oddly peaceful suburbs, where she is dumped into more of a fantasy world with confusing magic. There are a number of territories in this kind-of-dystopian world, and the author drags us through them, but the information we learn along the way turns out to be mainly superfluous and doesn’t have much of a bearing on the overall storyline. And I understand wanting to step outside of social norms to differentiate your fantasy world from reality, but when no reason is given for making a change, it just leads to awkwardness and confusion. For example, the author calls one woman “Lord Kamare,” but Leena (and all other women I can recall reading about in the story) is called “Lady Niran,” yet there is no explanation for the distinction, which just made it kind of weird.
I’m also not sure I fully (or even partly) understand the Oculan, or the Duro and the Nox, or why exactly Mordecai would want to trigger a Rupture (or what a Rupture really entails), even after reading the entire book. I feel like I missed an episode and need to go back and start the show from the beginning, because I’m still a bit lost.
I did really like how the author showed both Leena’s and Mordecai’s perspectives before revealing the larger conflict that bound them. It made the villainy a bit ambiguous, but that’s only because I had so much sympathy for both characters, I could see their motivations and cheer them both on in their own quests. Both characters were flawed, both tried to do what they truly believed to be right. So I did enjoy at least one aspect of the story.
But overall, I don’t believe I could recommend this book. Too many things didn’t make enough sense, and I was left wanting. I think an honest beta-reader and a good editor could do wonders to clean this up and make it a decent read, but it’s not there yet. Bummer.
Thanks to BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for the digital copy of this book for review purposes. I was not required to give a positive review. All opinions are my very own!

Firstly, that is one of the best covers I have seen in ages for a book, but I'm not sure how well it speaks to the genre of the book.

I wanted to love this book as it sounded soooo good. In the first chapter the MC is fighting for her life...but you know so little about her that for me I had no investment in this character. There are a lot of new terms/words thrown in and I found myself completely lost in the story until the point I gave up. I didn't want to, but I wasn't connecting with the MC or her journey because too much just wasn't clear to me as the reader.

Title: A Chameleon with a Sword
Author: B.L. Logan
Pub. Date: October 1, 2019
Rating: 3

This will be a spoiler free review. Quick shout out to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is either a 2-star read or a 4-star read. I’m super conflicted about this book. It was long, dense and the ending kind of pissed me off. With that being said, I couldn’t put it down, and there were a couple of instances that shocked me – a couple of reveals I didn’t anticipate.
I honestly don’t know how I feel about this book. I don’t. It was confusing. So much happened in the ~560 pages this novel contained, and half of it I had to continuously reread over and over for it to make sense. Like I said, super dense, and for it not to even be resolved at the end…I feel like I wasted the 12 hours – TWELVE HOURS – it took me to read this.
Now, maybe you’re thinking that 12 hours really isn’t a long time. You’re right, it’s not, but I can tell you that at least a quarter of those were spent rereading scenes to try and figure out what was happening. I also needed a map for this world, because for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out the placement of the various places.
I also had no idea going into this book that it wasn’t a pure high fantasy – that modernish/futuristic tech existed. The world was weird, and maybe it was explained in the book – it was – but I still don’t really understand it.
I liked the characters, all imperfect, some were whinier than others, but all wonderfully human. I think that they were probably my favorite part of the book – at least Leena, Aiden, Suki and Zacharia – I found Mordecai and his crew to just be annoying and wanted to skip past his chapters. Leena, who is the main character, survives so much. From an abusive, toxic home life, to being thrust into a world and a journey she wants no part of, to feeling alone and sad and angry constantly and feeling like she can’t trust anyone. Her character arc isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn good and impressive. While she could be annoying at times, I did really enjoy her.
This book also seemed to jump around a lot. And maybe it only felt that way due to the kind of weird – but not unreadable – formatting of the eARC. It just felt like I would be reading one scene, and then suddenly there would be a passage of time(?) and we’d be onto another scene. Also, there were moments when I couldn’t figure out how certain characters were interacting in specific ways, because only moments ago they were like, across the room from each other.
Overall, I felt like I was given so much information and I don’t know if it all was relevant. Clearly, it’s been left open for a second book, but Goodreads has no listing for it, and I don’t know if I’m going to be invested enough to read a second book. Especially if it’s as long and dense as this one was. I do think that all this information was included in this book, in case there isn’t a second one, but for how open ended this one was left…I’m just not sure. I think this book could have done with some more editing, and could have been split into two long books, versus this apparent solitary novel.
1) I think having more time with these characters would have been seriously beneficial – and that could have happened with more than one book.
2) I think that with having two longer books, the world could have been expanded more, and maybe it wouldn’t be as densely packed with tons of information.
So much happened in this book, yet I feel like nothing did. Other than a few shocking moments, nothing really makes me want to tell you to go read this. Actually, even the shocking moments don’t make me want to tell you to go read this. It’s not a bad book, it’s just long, dense and so much. I think the author has promise, and the story they created is really cool. I just wish it had been a little bit of a lighter read, and things had been explained better, over a longer period of time. Because having an entire worlds worth of lore/history/rules shoved at me in ~560 pages, I retained none of it. A Chameleon with a Sword is out now, and if you do read this, let me know what you think

Leena Niran just wants to earn money by fencing so that she can eat. With her mother addicted to any substance that comes her way, Leena can't wait to turn seventeen so she can strike out on her own. However, when her mother disappears after a car crash, Leena isn't sure what to make of the man who shows up and offers her a stable place to stay.

Prince Mordecai is living in the moral realm after he was excited from his homeland. As a member of the Nox, protectors of the Night, he works to do what is best for those who were forced to flee with him. When an illness starts ravaging his people, Mordecai knows it's time to seek a cure.

Leena and Mordecai are pushed onto a collision course since the cure lies within Leena's veins. As Leena learns more about her own past and a family she barely knew, Mordecai hunts Leena hoping to save the exiled Nox.

Within B.L. Logan's The Chameleon with a Sword there's a lot going on. There are multiple realms; multiple groups of people; and, with a dual point of view, there are quite a number of characters. Logan created several memorable characters that were a joy to read with Aiden, Zacharias, and Erastus being the most interesting. However, at times I couldn't remember who some of the less central characters were or even how the realms were connected given that there is a lot of world building occurring within the novel, so I just allowed myself to be swept into the plot. The plot itself is very cinematic, particularly the second half of the novel when secrets are revealed and Mordecai begins his hunt for Leena. There are quite a number of countries mentioned in the novel, and the map located at the beginning is helpful to determine where the current action is occurring.

There are many items to commend here. As mentioned, great characters and a very interesting world. However, the are some pieces that I wasn't the biggest fan of. The world building was at times too much, leading to some confusion. I love standalones since there's a tendency to try to serialize stories, yet this was a novel that felt like it might benefit from more space to do Logan's world building justice. I also wasn't sure I loved the ending. It felt like some plot points were resolved but not the ones I was really interested in.

Overall, this was a fun, though sometimes confusing read, and I will be tuning in for more of B.L. Logan's work.

Leena is a loner, a fencer who hones her skill at a place where illegal sword fights take place over gaping holes. She's sent a lot of opponents down to either suffer or die or both. She does it for the money, to survive. She does it because, though she's only 16, there's no one to take care of her. She does it for the thrill.
I liked Leena a lot as well as her other friends. The characters in the story are great, especially Mordecai. The author does a fantastic job of taking the villain hunting Leena and making him relatable, human. That takes skill.
My only complaint is the unanswered questions I and other readers are left with. Why did Leena's mother hate her so? Why did her father choose her mother and then abandon them? Is she ever going to build steam with Aiden?

This was a bit of an average read to me, not terrible but not amazing? I liked the dual POV and getting to see things from both Leena and Mordecai's perspectives and how things came together in the end. There were a lot of interesting side characters in both characters' lives, but at times it felt like there was too much going on and too many moving parts. Overall, this was a good story with interesting characters and a badass story.

A very detailed book of the live of a young woman, wo discovers she ka going to ne a leader in one of the three worlds den lives on.

Good character building, a solid book, but I did feel at times it was trying too hard, for a YA novel. I'm not sure if it's the world-building that felt too info-dumpy or if it was something else, but the book didn't quite click. It's a solid book, of course, it just didn't *quite* land with me.

3.5 starts
A very interesting urban YA sci-fi/fantasy read with sometimes a little too much going on. I enjoyed the stort and getting to know the characters but the world building was quite detailed at times, which made me having to focus extra to understand exactly what has happened in this world to be the way it is.
I liked having POV of both main characters and found them both qually intriguing but it did take me awhile to get into the story and there were parts that I still find confusing. I don't say this often but less information would've been better for this story.