Grimizna kraljica

The world is divided by what color your blood is. If you bleed red then you are a commoner by birth, forced into the lower class world without an ability to call your own. If you bleed silver then you are a high-class citizen with unique powers. Mare Barrow was born into the red. She lives with her family, struggling to survive. She picks pockets to keep them afloat until she is caught by a sympathetic silver. Surprised by the show of kindness from a silver stranger, Mare is baffled when she is summoned to the high court to become a servant. There she will learn that she too possesses power, and the silvers will do anything to hide a red with silver powers. Mare finds herself in a treacherous world and she must decide who she can trust with her deadly secret.

I picked this up because of the number of reviews I have seen. The concept seemed interesting and I wondered how well it would be executed. I found the world building lacking. There wasn't enough time spent in the red world before Mare was pulled into the silver. While I understood the reds were treated poorly, the emotion behind it never reached me. I never felt sorry for Mare. Then again I also couldn't stand Mare.

Mare is one of those female characters who is always a damsel in distress. No matter what she always seems to end up the victim. She feels sorry for everyone and is always berating herself for not doing anything when bad things happen. She is gullible and desperate to trust people. Given how she was raised, I found it unbelievable how she came to trust the silvers. How in the world did she survive in the red world like this? It seems the only thing that she's good at is thieving and throwing her power around in pure luck.

There was also very little action in the first sixty percent of the book. I almost stopped reading it. If it weren't an audiobook I probably would have. But I plodded on and the plot finally picked up speed near the end of the novel. The first book in a series can be hard to write. Given how this ended, I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and hope the next one is better. We shall see.