I absolutely loved this sequel. It felt so good to be back in this world.

Red Tigress takes place weeks after the events in Blood Heir. Morganya has claimed the throne, under the guise of hunting down non-affinites accused of Affinite trafficking, when really her regime has nothing to do with justice. Ana and Ramson make way to Goldwater Port where Ana hopes to gain support from Yuri and the Redcloaks... but is met with resistance and disappointment. Linn is a pretty prominent character in this installment, and things get interesting when she must work with Kais, who is very much of a mystery at first. Is he a friend or foe? Zhao really knows how to make you wary of this character.

I thought this was much more magically and politically charged than Blood Heir. From the political machinations in Bregon, a powerful artifact that can create affinites, Ana learning more about her magic and growing into herself, to exploring Ramson's dynamic with his sister Sorsha and father both intriguing and chilling.. So much unfolded in Bregon and there are plenty of twists, betrayals and bloody action. It was tightly paced and never a dull moment for me. I also adored all the banter between Ana and Ramson, their moments of vulnerability and not wholly dependent on each other. Sigh, I wasn't a fan of the ending though.

Overall, I enjoyed this sequel a lot. It had action, adventure, magic, intrigue, friendship and angst. I love the world Zhao created and I"m definitely looking forward to seeing how she'll wrap this up. Hopefully a HEA, or more Ana and Ramson moments please.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc.

This wasn’t as good as I was hoping. I read an arc of Blood Heir before it essentially got cancelled and (re)published. I really enjoyed it. I don’t know if I didn’t love Red Tigress because of the time in between or what. I love Ana, but I can do without everyone else. I hated the ending. I just face-palmed the few last chapters. So, overall, this book was okay to me. I’m not sure if I still want the book or even the third.

*SPOILERS* I was so happy when Ana was working on her powers; they’ve always enticed me. So I was fairly devastated when she lost them. I had hoped Sorcha stabbed her with something to try and overflow her with powers. I definitely didn’t want her powers siphoned. I’m also annoyed with Ramson. He’s just like his father. Ana would never ask him to give up his missions and quest, yet he can’t even admit to her his feelings. Yuri is also annoying wanting to fight Ana. Yes the whole fight over the crown lead to some of the disaster, but if Ana was Empress this stuff wouldn’t happen. He should know that. Linn has always been ehh for me. I get why she wants to go home, but the best way to prevent Morgayna from wreaking havoc is to team up with Ana.

REVIEW:

Red Tigress heightens the stakes set in Blood Heir as Ana faces off new enemies and allies, all while forging a blood-torn path to an explosive third installment.

Normally I would give a spiel about how I haven't read Blood Heir in two years, but there's so much I want to say about this sequel, I'm just going to jump in!

Let's start with a quick refresher to the world. A loose retelling of Anastasia, we follow an exiled princess who can control people's blood. She reluctantly teams up with a slippery con artist to reclaim her throne. Throw in an evil monarch plus a band of underground rebels, and you've got the basic setup of the story.

Some quick terms: “Affinites” are people born with an affinity for a certain power. Our protagonist, Ana, is the outlawed princess of Cyrillia and a rare blood affinite. Other affinites can control aspects like strength, fire, and snow. “Yaegers” are individuals who can manipulate and even cancel out the powers of Affinites.

Now, onto the actual review.

The Characters

After the tumultuous ending of Blood Heir, Ana has been assigned this new monicker of the "Red Tigress". She's desperate to win back her throne and save her people from being slaughtered. I love Ana because, while her moral compass generally points north, she isn't a perfect protagonist. She's fierce and sometimes volatile in a way often only shown in male characters, which I really appreciated. Amélie doesn't idealize her character or her actions, instead leaving it up to the reader to decide if Ana is making the best decisions for her people.

Onto Ramson. Our clever con artist and selfish survivalist (or so we're told). Ramson struggles a lot with his identity in this book, torn between tying up the loose ends of his past and finding a new place at Ana's side. I feel like we lost some of Ramson's mystery in this sequel, and instead were told a lot about his feelings. While he didn't seem quite as fleshed out in this book, I still love him.

By FAR one of my favorite aspects of this book was Linn. Wind affinite, brutal survivor, and Ana's best friend. I loved her in the first book and that love tripled in Red Tigress. I was equally invested in her chapters as Ana's. Linn has a lot of trauma she needs to unpack - from being trafficked into another country, to losing her family and freedom. She's tough without losing her heart, and I was constantly impressed with how she manages to think with a logical mind in the most nail-biting situations. Her friendship and loyalty to Ana pulled at my heart. I was also totally sold on her burgeoning relationship with a certain yaeger...

Oh Kais. Kais came out of nowhere and snatched all of my attention. He's a yaeger who appears briefly in Blood Heir as an antagonist. In this book, he winds up crossing paths with Linn. I'll say no more. In some ways he's your typical cold emotionally-cut-off character, but his honesty and surprisingly empathetic nature snagged me.

The Plot

This book dives deep when it comes to politics. We have Ana attempting to regain her throne and save her people, but then Amélie throws that whole mission into question. See, the rebellion leaders in this series push for democracy and believe the monarchy needs to end. Most YA fantasies assume the protagonist would make a good ruler, but Zhao gives her civilians a voice for nuanced opinions. It was incredibly refreshing. I like that Ana's ascendance to the throne is not seen as the sole solution to the kingdom's turmoil, and that rebel groups oppose her rule. Despite his little screen time, I'm spotlighting one of the leaders, Seyin, because my feelings for him were all over the place. I suspect this thorny rebel will come into play a lot in the final installment.

To wrap up, the ending definitely hooked me. I’m dying to know how the villains will play out in the third book, because there is such a juggling cast of allies and enemies. And some of them I feel really conflicted about! Not just because of who they are, but because of what they stand for. Gah I need that third book!

Overall, this second book kept me on my toes and was a worthy successor.

Trigger Warnings: blood, cutting, nonconsensual drug use, drowning, murder, attempted murder, use of knives, kidnapping, human trafficking.

*All quotes are taken from an uncorrected advance copy of the book and are liable to change upon publication.

Ana, Ramson, and the gang are back and just as great as they were in the first book.

In Red Tigress, we follow Ana deeper into the new regime that Morganya has created. Needing all the allies she can get before she can reclaim her throne, Ana meets with old friends and new, traveling to distant lands--only to find out that Cyrillia isn't the only place that's corrupt.

With POVs from Ana, Ramson, Linn, and Kais, we really get to see the story unravel from multiple perspectives which sets up the plot nicely. There were so many twists and turns that kept me guessing until the very end.

And that ending! I can't say how glad I am that we're still in for another installment in this epic trilogy!

As always, we love a good love story--especially messy ones--and Zhao delivers. If you were a fan of the first, you're going to love this second book just as much! Hold on to you hats because revolution is coming, and boy does it get bloody.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Red Tigress, second the Blood Heir trilogy, continues successfully on the heels of its controversy-laden predecessor. This one expands on the world, going outside the land of Cyrilia to explore the nation of a Bregon, making the world feel more expansive and immersive. The Russian-inspired Cyrilia was a key appeal factor for the first book, so to see more cultural expansion and how Zhao put a lot of thought into the distinct cultures and languages of the two regions, likely based at least in part on her own lived experiences, is nice.

I enjoyed the characters this time around, and while the twists the plot takes them on were fairly predictable, they worked fairly well for each character. Ana further comes into her own on her quest to take back her throne, and Ramson is continuing on his quest of revenge against his employer. I did find it interesting that they parted ways, focusing on their individual conflicts. I did find that fairly interesting though, especially as that does set it apart from other YA fantasy series that are pushing an epic romance vibe either instead of or overshadowing the lead(s) pursuing their own goals, and it’s nice to have something a bit different.

This is another intriguing installment in a series by an up-and-coming author. If you enjoyed the first one, I think you’ll also like this one.

Ana’s brother is dead. With her aunt Morganya taking the throne and beginning her reign in a shower of blood, Ana finds herself in need of help to stop her. But how to defeat someone who seems to hold all the power, especially when there’s whispers of a powerful weapon that she’s searching for? Ana has to partner with the dashing Ramson once again and travel to the kingdom of Bregon, in the hopes of securing an alliance that will save her and her people’s lives.

I received an advanced reading copy of Red Tigress in exchange for an honest review.

Red Tigress is a young adult fantasy novel by Amélie Wen Zhao, and it also happens to be the sequel to Blood Heir, which I reviewed some time ago. It’s the second book of the Blood Heir trilogy, and it certainly has quite its share of excitement!

If there was ever a novel that was plot-led, I’d say this one was it. From the very beginning, we find ourselves still reeling a bit from the aftermath of what happened at the end of the last book. And here is where I admit that I didn’t quite remember what had happened at the end of the last book. I had a vague idea, but I did have to find my copy of it and re-read the last few chapters to figure out exactly what I was diving into in these. I remembered some specific moments, but definitely not enough, and the while there’s only really one major event from the last book that matters in this one, it’s a pretty important one! I’m honestly surprised I didn’t actually remember it.

Anyway, back to the book. Well, this book sets a pretty relentless pace for all our POV characters. It was so relentless, in fact, that I found it a bit hard to keep up. Do you guys ever read books where just so much is happening on the page that it’s hard to connect to the characters? I had that feeling. I thought the book could have used a few more quiet moments, just to let us get to know the characters and their relationships, and while there is a short sequence where all the characters are just mostly hanging out while planning what they’re going to do next, it wasn’t enough to sustain me for the entire book.

There’s one character in particular that I would have loved to know more about, and that is Sorsha. I thought Sorsha could have really been such a fascinating character, very much like Azula from Avatar: the Last Airbender, but instead, she felt sort of flat. She had one dimension and nothing else, and I thought spending a bit more time with her, or even having some specific characters remembering more about her would have helped immensely in making her much scarier, and a much more interesting character overall. I don’t know what it is about characters like this that draw me to them, but I think she could have been so much more.

We do meet some other fun characters who I really want to discuss but I also know that would spoil some big moments for you guys. In fact, I could have already spoiled something telling you about Sorsha, but I don’t think so, since you guys still don’t know who she is, and she is exactly as I described from the very first second she shows up on the page.

The book was exciting, though! With all the action, there were lots of surprises in store for all the characters, and the stakes were both impressive and enormous. This is definitely the kind of book for someone who just wants to see lots of things happening, one after the other, and definitely lots of blood. (Well, the series is called the Blood Heir trilogy, right?)

Also, this book doesn’t really suffer from the second-book syndrome, where a middle book in a trilogy only serves as a connection between books one and three. There’s definitely a self-contained plot here, although it doesn’t get revealed until later, and that sort of ties it all up quite nicely, while still leaving much open for book three.

Overall, I thought the book was good, but it didn’t excite me as much as the first one did. I think part of it was that I struggled to connect to the characters here, but that was my problem specifically. There’s lots of other people who are in it for the action, for the blood, and for the magic. And there’s a lot of really cool magic stuff that happens in here! There’s enough of it, in fact, that I definitely am going to read the final book in the trilogy!

Red Tigress will be released on March 2. You can pre-order your copy from Delacorte Press here.

Omg I loved this book so much more than Blood Heir. I will admit that some parts were slow but that ending tore at my heart. Why did she do that to Ramson and Ana? Especially since Ana had finally seen Ramson as a match. Ugh!!!

What an amazing sequel to a much beloved book! The way she writes is magical, and you can’t help but get swept away into this amazing world. I loved everything about this.

Highly recommend!

Worthy sequel to The Blood Heir. The characters are more fleshed out, though I find myself wanting more scenes between Ana and Ramsom. Linn and Kais come into their own, and the author does a really good job moving the complex plot along. It's a great set-up to what will be a most-awaited final installment, which promises an epic conclusion.

I found this second book to be faster paced, and enjoyed the wonderful writing.

Red Tigress is the second book in a trilogy, sequel to Blood Heir. Ana - Anastacya Mikhailov, heir to the throne of Cyrillia, an alternative world version of something resembling Russia - has been deposed by her adopted aunt, who, like Ana, is an Affinate, a person with the in-born power to control some element. Ana's aunt, Morganya, can control minds, and she used her power in Blood Heir to control the previous heir to the throne, Ana's brother Luka. Unable to control Ana, Morganya instead controls the other leaders of Cyrillia, driving Ana from her home. Seeking help in Bregon, a neighboring country, Ana discovers a web of intrigue, with both allies and enemies at its heart, a web she will need to disassemble if she is to get help for herself and her homeland. Fans of fantasies with X-Men-like powers will enjoy the Affinities that wind through this society, and will recognize the use, and abuse, of the Affinites who possess these powers. Red Tigress is a fitting sequel to Blood Heir, and I look forward to reading the third book when it is released.

I read Blood Heir around this time last year. It took me awhile to familiarize myself with the world again, but it was great to jump back in again.
This sequel was much more plot driven with less dialogue and banter than the first novel. Although it was written from different point of views which I liked. The characters really didn't spend much time together as the book was mainly focused on a mission to be completed. Linn and Kais really made the book for me. What I loved about Ransom and Ana in the first book is close to what I got from Linn and Kais in this book. There was very little interaction between Ana and Ransom, which I wished there would have been a little more of.
Overall, I really enjoyed the sequel. Beautiful writing. Though I did love the first book much more.

Thank you netgalley and Delacorte for allowing me to read an early copy.

Thanks to netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Despite the gap between reading Blood Heir and the sequel, I was able to pick up right where I left off with minimal confusion. Ana's world drew me in once again, and the book picked up around 30% when they made it to Bregon. I loved this story and the conflict, especially the internal conflict for Ana. Ramson in this book fell a little flat for me, but Linn and Kais stepped up in his place. This was definitely a more plot driven novel and we did not get nearly as much relationship building or background as we did in Blood Heir.

My main critique was sometimes with language/word choice. The author does a great job of writing beautiful prose, but sometimes it become a little too dramatic or flowery for its purpose- and it often felt like words had been replaced with their less common synonyms to make it seem fancier? Maybe it was just me but it did occasionally distract from the plot.

Overall I devoured this book. It was a perfect second book for a trilogy, and it left me satisified and wanting more! Let's all hope that Ransom changes his mind about that final decision!

The long awaited sequel is finally here!! The story follows our duo Princess Ana and conman Ransom. Having been forced to flee from the empress of Morganya, the two travel across the sea with Ana hoping to gather allies for her revolution. There are new characters introduced and secrets that come to light about her companions. It’s a great action packed read and fits perfectly after the events of the first book. I was so happy to have received this arc and can’t wait to get the physical copy in my hands! Red Tigress ends with such a cliffhanger and I can’t wait to see how the story expands in the third book!

*Thanks Netgalley and Random House Children's for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review

I was incredibly excited to be approved for this ARC, as I loved reading Blood Heir! Red Tigress returns to the unlikely duo of Princess Ana and conman Ramson, forced to flee the cruel empress Morganya. Traveling across the sea to Bregon, Ana has one chance to try to gather allies for her revolution. But all is not as it seems, mysterious new characters complicate matters and her allies have not been entirely honest. As promises are made and friendships are tested, Ana must decide who to ally with and what type of world she will fight for.

Red Tigress is action-packed! Zhao’s description is lyrical and beautiful; it is a delight to read. I absolutely loved being back with these vibrant characters! Zhao writes such complex and strong characters, all faced with challenging obstacles barring the way. In Red Tigress, all the characters go through significant changes and must make difficult choices about who to trust to achieve their goals. At a certain point it becomes impossible to put this book down!

Red Tigress is a strong and compelling sequel that expands on the rich world-building, character development, and exploration of power and justice that began in Blood Heir. Zhao delivers a well-paced and exhilarating adventure. She also sets up what promises to be a thrilling finale to the series. I can’t wait to see how Ana’s story concludes and highly recommend you pick up Red Tigress! You won’t want to miss it. Red Tigress releases March 2, 2021. Thank you so much to Amélie Wen Zhao, Delacorte Press, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on the publication date and I will publish it on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble etc.

For some reason I thought this was a duology so I was super mad at the way this ended.
Now that Ana's real identity has been shown she must go ona trip to get more supporters for her claim to the throne.
Betrayals are inevitable.
Will people follow their hearts or their minds.
I really hope there is more ransom in the 3rd book.

I had an enjoyable time reading this and it held my attention the entire way through that I finished it within the day! I enjoyed every page and thought that the plot/story was very unique. Would recommend to anyone!

Loved the sequel, not as much as the first book but I enjoyed the character’s journey and progression. It was a great read

4.5 stars

I read the last 40% of this book in one sitting, praying that my kids would stay asleep until I finished, because I didn’t want to have to wait until their naptime to finish this book! And now I really need the third book, especially after that ending and epilogue! It’s going to be hard to wait until the third book is published...

There was a lot to love about this book! The writing is beautiful, and I loved the descriptions of the scenery. I could picture everything so clearly, and the beauty of the words drew me into the story. The pacing is well done; it kept me interested and turning pages as quickly as I could. I also really loved the exploration of the themes of choice and choosing to do good. I like books that have good vs. evil at the core of the story, and this book did that very well!

The characters are also well-written; I smiled, teared up, and got completely caught up in what was happening to them on the page! I’m looking forward to reading the final book to see what happens with them, but at the same time I will be sad to say goodbye to them. So I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have to do that yet and have something to look forward to next year!

I took off a half star from my rating because of the swearing. The writing is beautiful, as I mentioned before, and I think the use of swear words was jarring in comparison with the prose. Thankfully there weren’t too many swear words, but they did pop up occasionally.

Content:
Sweet romance (I love books with clean romance in them, so I appreciated that about this book)
Moderate swearing

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4/5 stars
Thank you to the publisher for the e-ARC via netgalley!

First: when reading my review just know that I loved Blood Heir, but I read it as an ARC after it was pulled and re-written.

I loved the different affinities in the original book and really enjoyed learning more about them and more affinities in the sequel. We get to know more about Ana, Ramson, Linn, and several other characters. And we got new characters. Naturally this book included more deceit, betrayal, and etc.

My main complaint was the pacing wasn't the greatest in this book. There was a lot of setting up for the last 20% of the book. While there was still action throughout it was all short little bits. Red Tigress was definitely more about laying down groundwork for the finale and I'm excited to see how Ana and the rest of the character's stories end.

Red Tigress by Amelie Wen Zhao is the second book in the Blood Heir Trilogy. We pick up shortly after where we left Ana and Ransom in Blood Heir. Ana is on a mission to take back her empire from the Empress Morganya and Ransom to take revenge on his former employer and master criminal Alaric Kerlan. In the course of the first few chapters the main characters find themselves separated in Novo Mynsk while on their way to the southern coastal town of Goldwater Port where they are reunited with Linn…and the former Yaeger and former white cloak. Linn and Kais have come to a tentative alliance upon finding their way to Ana. Many secrets come out, Ransom and Ana continue to avoid their feelings, and conspiracies and new enemies come to light.

I enjoyed this book but not quite as much a I did the first book, Blood Heir. Though the plot twists and surprises are quite predictable it didn’t distract from the story. I think, perhaps, that Ransom and Kais have the most transparent storylines and “twists” but also have the most personal issues and subsequent growth. Ana comes to understand and appreciate her powers and Ransom comes to terms with his past. Linn and Kais are most definitely my favorite characters throughout Red Tigress and I really wouldn’t mind reading a whole book just about them.

Once again Amelie Wen Zhao has continued on her beautiful world building and it is absolutely easy to get lost in it. I am definitely interested and excited to see where book three brings these characters and the new places Amelie takes us to.