Blade of Secrets (Bladesmith, #1)

by Tricia Levenseller

Liz Dresner (Cover Designer) and Sasha Vinogradova (Artist)

Eighteen-year-old Ziva prefers metal to people. She spends her days tucked away in her forge, safe from society and the anxiety it causes her, using her magical gift to craft unique weapons imbued with power.

Then Ziva receives a commission from a powerful warlord, and the result is a sword capable of stealing its victims' secrets. A sword that can cut far deeper than the length of its blade. A sword with the strength to topple kingdoms. When Ziva learns of the warlord's intentions to use the weapon to enslave all the world under her rule, she takes her sister and flees.

Joined by a distractingly handsome mercenary and a young scholar with extensive knowledge of
the world's known magics, Ziva and her sister set out on a quest to keep the sword safe until they can find a worthy wielder or a way to destroy it entirely.

• ISBN10: 1250756804
• ISBN13: 9781250756800
• Publish Date: 4 May 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Ashley]

VERY quick and easy read. It was fun, but perhaps a little hollow.

Blade of Secrets had a very different vibe from The Shadows Between Us, which was a little disappointing to me. I wasn't expecting another morally grey MC story, but I thought Blade of Secrets would feel a bit more like upper YA, given that the main character is 18. That's how I felt about The Shadows Between Us. But this didn't feel like upper YA at all. In fact, I thought the main character acted a bit more like 16 rather than 18. So that was an expectation mismatch for me.

But otherwise it was a fun book. It won't be sticking with me for any length of time, but it was enjoyable.

I thought the end was rough though. This is meant to be a duology, but Blade of Secrets didn't feel like it had much closure on its own. It didn't even really have a cliffhanger. Rather than ending mid-series, it felt like it just ended after a perfectly normal chapter. In other words: instead of a duology this just felt like one book chopped in half. Even with a series I expect a certain plot line to be wrapped up, even if more questions are posed for the next book. But this just felt like halfway through one single book.