Half-Blood, Jennifer L Armentrout

Pages: 307

Publisher: Hodder

Release Date: 14th August 2014

Edition: UK paperback, review copy via BookBridgr

Other Titles in this Series: Pure, Deity, Apollyon, Sentinel

The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi, pure-bloods, have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals – well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become trained Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of pures.

Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:

Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden.

Unfortunately, she’s crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn’t her biggest problem – staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. Is she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden. And that would kind of suck.

Earlier in the year I became entranced by Jennifer L Armentrout’s Lux series so I was eager to pick this up. I think that series may have been a fluke...

Half-Blood sounds startlingly original at first glance: Hematoi, Sentinels, half-bloods – all sounds very exciting. It turns out that it’s basically demi-gods and the children they produce when they mate with mortals and an exclusive, strict boarding school that teaches them how to protect their world. Now I love Greek mythology and when authors make it their own, but I just didn’t feel like Armentrout did that. I also felt that the basic plot lines surrounding the mythology and Alex’s antics were pretty much identical to that of Vampire Academy. I was disappointed to say the least.

The only element that I enjoyed in the novel was the relationship between Alex and Aiden, and even that felt a whole lot like a re-run of Rose and Dimitri... Aiden is the character that I found the most interesting, and the only one I genuinely liked in Half-Blood. Their relationship built steadily and shakily, neither sure what the other felt and so many obstacles between them. I mean, Alex could lose everything if she was caught even kissing Aiden – their relationship is properly forbidden by Covenant law. I do love me a good forbidden love. And theirs was good. I bought into the attraction, the trust, the understanding, and the beginnings of love. I’d read on purely to find out how they turn out.

Half-Blood got me through a sad plane ride home from Greece when I really didn’t want to go home and it passed the time quickly. I haven’t decided if I’ll continue on with the series, however.

Thanks to Hodder and BookBridgr for the review copy.

Sophie