The prose was evocative, at times mesmerizing, but the plot and character development was lacking.

I am on the fence about this one. Wonderblood is a post-apocolyptic story set in a world reminiscent of mad max. While i loved the story idead and the strong writing, this book just didnt hook me, and i found the beheading was overdone for my taste.

It took a lot to get me to push through and keep reading this book. I have to admit that I didn't start to enjoy it till I was about 65% of the way through. Once I hit that 65% I started to understand this warped post-apocalyptic  world a bit more, though there were a lot of things throughout the book that I had a hard time wrapping my head around (like the heads! the brutality! the rival queens! the magic! I also felt zero connection with the characters, probably because the chapters kept switching POVs and I found it hard to follow.

reviewed for romantic times book reviews

What a huge heaping pile of horse shit I had to crawl through, just to reach the end of this dreadful story. First off heads. Head's everywhere! Axed off. Cut off. Sawed off. Staked. Bagged. Hanging from walls, tents, around waists. Ugh. I am completely skeeved out by beheadings. Still, I kept reading. Surely it can only get better? Hurrump! No character building. The characters are all complete idjits. Finally there was no ending. None. At no time did I ever get lost in this book. The Cape, the carnival and its people not once became real to me, but I did at least expect some resolution. I'll not recommend or read anything from this author.

I did not finish this book. The off page child rape and the sibling molestation made me uncomfortable. I won't be reviewing it.

Intersting story. Nothing that truly stuck out to me or struck me in anyway.

Wonderblood has one of the darkest and more fascinating world building structures I've ever seen in a dystopia.  It's dark and bloody and creepy.  A religion has sprouted over the idea of the space shuttles and that they will come back to Earth and rescue everyone, and there will be a new day dawning, one of Hope and Mercy.  The setting and the Carnivals and the astronomical focus of the government at Cape Canaveral is fascinating.

No, scratch that.  It is so freaking dark and amazing.

Unfortunately, that is where the amazingness of Wonderblood ends.  The story is told from three points of view as mysterious, unplotted lights appear in the sky.  Are they comets?  Are they meteors?  Are they the shuttles?  Spoken in turns between Aurora who is thought to be a sigil of the end of this world, John the court astronomer, and Mavel the Heirophant, the reader watches as Cape Canaveral slowly disintegrates as various people lay out their cards and act out their beliefs upon the lights.

Aurora is a child bride, more or less raped, and branded at various points in the story.  John can't make up his mind about what he wants.  Marvel meant to kill someone but didn't and now wants to go back and finish the job.  While I didn't care for any of the narrators, Marvel's whole storyline is chaos, because as far as I could tell, it wasn't at all relevant to the story.

There are decent characters in the sidelines - I wanted to learn more about the Green Butterfly and more about Queen Allyson.  Orchid had potential, but it was squandered on hero worship of her husband.  Tygo would have been a decent unreliable narrator, but he is instead in the stands and thrown about to further John and Marvel's plots.

Most frustrating of all, we wait the entire book for this build up of a war, and to find out what the lights in the sky were... and then the book ends abruptly in the middle of everything.  I am so, so frustrated.

I really, really, really loved this world.  Honestly, I did.  I was fascinated by the religion that grew around distant memories of space exploration, and the execution carnivals, and the blood rain.  I wanted more of that. I wanted to see a really incredible story in this world.  I think Julia Whicker has a fabulous imagination and a real knack for world building, but the storytelling just wasn't there.

I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic books. I enjoy reading about how a civilization would adjust if something awful happened. So, when I saw Wonderblood, I was excited. I was excited because the author had this civilization worshipping NASA and the space shuttles. It was something different from the usual post-apocalyptic stories. Then I started reading the book and became disappointed. I actually struggled to finish reading it. Which is something that I rarely do.

If the author had stuck with only the girl’s storyline, I would have liked this book more. But the constant switching between characters became confusing after a while. There were several times where I would start a chapter, get a few paragraphs in and have to reread because I thought it was another character. That alone made me want to DNF it. I can’t stand it when chapters aren’t labeled when the author switches characters POV. Makes it very difficult to keep the rhythm of the story going if I have to keep going back in a chapter to reread it.

I felt that there were several unresolved storylines. Such as the plotline with the Pardoness. She asked Marvel to get a surgeon to cut off her legs, which were deformed. Marvel (the Hierophant) went through all the trouble tracking Tygo (the prisoner) down and taking him from John (the Chief Orbital Doctor). Then nothing ever happened. Instead, all 3 men did something else and she was never mentioned again. The other storylines were not as major but still annoying. I dislike it when I am reading a book and a storyline is dropped.

I didn’t feel a connection to the characters at all. All the characters felt flat. They were not 3 dimensional at all. Not rounded out. Put it this way, when I read a book, I like to imagine the characters as flesh and blood people. I couldn’t even with these characters. They were more paper doll-like in my mind.

The end of Wonderblood confused me. It was written as a cliffhanger but there is no mention of a 2nd book. All the storylines are left up in the air. There is no resolution of anything.

Now, there were some parts of the book I liked. I thought the plotline was original. I liked that the author used NASA, the space shuttles and Cape Canaveral as major plot points. The fact that these people worshipped the shuttles and NASA fascinated me.

What also fascinated me was that this civilization kept heads as charms. Yes, human heads. They were supposed to protect and guide them in that horrible world. The last thing that fascinated me, and I wished more time had been spent explaining it, was that medicine and surgery were forbidden. If you were found practicing, you were put to death.

I would give Wonderblood an Adult rating. There are sexual situations and disturbing scenes of pedophilia. There are some very graphic scenes of violence.

I would not reread this book. I also would not recommend to family and friends. While the plotline was good and had promise, I felt that the cons outweighed the pros.

The cons are: flat characters, dropped storylines, unresolved storylines and an ending that is confusing.

The pros: Interesting storyline

I have always loved dystopian books so naturally I was intrigued by the synopsis I read on Wonderblood. The story is set about 500 years into the future and most of the population has been decimated by something called "bent neck" disease (maybe like mad cow?). The population appears to be divided into those who believe in magic and those who worship the stars and believe that the shuttles that launched hundreds of years ago are destined to return to earth to save the devout. 
The story begins with a young girl getting taken by Mr. Capulatio to be his new bride when he returns to Cape Canaveral the "mecca"  (so to speak) to those that have made a religion out of space travel. He plans to take over as the True King as predicted in the texts he decifers. 
From the description of the story I really felt that this would be something I could lose myself in but I had a very hard time connecting with what I thought were the main characters. There were just too many characters with nothing really engaging about any of them. I struggled to finish the book and even though the writing was beautiful the story did not resound the way I had hoped it would.   I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I had a lot of trouble getting into this book. The characters felt hard to sympathize or relate to, and it just felt really sad and depressing and unnecessarily gory with all the head collecting. I really wanted to like it more than I did.

Definitely not my kind of book, but the author does a great job of drawing you in! It's a sci-fi/fantasy mix, with people dying of a plague and putting their hope in religion and superstitions. There's a rotating narrative, which I didn't find super helpful to the story line but gives the reader better idea of what's going on in general. The action mainly follows a girl, a skeptic of magic and the religious order, who is proclaimed to be The Queen and is expected to bring an end to the world's suffering. The ending of the book is definitely set up for a sequel. It's kind of a darker read, so if that sounds like your cup of tea I'd recommend this one.

I tried but was unable to finish this book. It was too slow for me to get into though other's may like its pacing I did not.

I finished Wonderblood late last night and needed to sleep on it before I could formulate my thoughts into a coherent review.  Firstly, this is a debut novel for Julia Whicker and although this book did not blow me away, I would certainly be interested in other books (unrelated to this one) that she may write in the future.  I enjoyed her writing style a lot which was not just agreeable but at times absolutely lyrical.  

At the beginning of the book, literally the first 10 to 15-pages, there was some content that almost made me give it up.  It did not grab me at all and in fact certain elements of it turned me off.  It is an adult sci-fi novel that is set in a very gritty, very harsh post-apocalyptic wasteland.  There are triggers for abuse, child rape, sibling incest and/or sibling molestation; I could see this causing a lot of people to turn away very quickly from this book.  If you can get by that, it does get a lot better and I am glad that I stuck with it. 

The middle is where I feel the story is at its strongest, with political intrigue and an interesting "religious" system.  The story does take place in a future United States, which has had its population decimated by a mad cow-like disease - this story picks up in the aftermath of that although we never learn too much about the chain of events prior to the current action. Quite generally, it reminded me of Mad Max meets The Road.

One of my biggest disappointments for this book was the lack of character development.  I came away just feeling blah about all of the characters - there were none that I related too or even felt that I knew enough about to care for in any way. If this were a start to a series (I am not sure if it is slated as a stand-alone or a series), I would not pick up the second book, really because I just do not care what happens to any of these characters. Additionally, I didn't feel like the atmosphere was strong enough to make up for the lack of character development.  

Mainly, I gave this three stars due to the writing style of the author and the unique ideas included in the world she was creating - for example, I loved that the characters worshiped NASA space shuttles and had Cape Canaveral as their holiest of sites - but the execution overall fell a little flat for me.  *I was given a copy of this book from St. Martin's Press in exchange for an honest review and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to read it and comment on it.  I am excited to hear what others think of this story!

Overall I thought the concept of this book was pretty neat. From all the prophecies based on the "true king" and the return of the space shuttles to the disease known as "Bent Head," I thought it a unique and engaging read. I do think that it could have been a much better story, but it was still highly entertaining.

This was pretty darn good. The world was richly developed, and the characters were well-rounded and interesting. The history of how the planet got to this point was very intriguing; personally, I'd love to see a story from that part of history.

'Wonderblood' will draw you in and make it difficult to leave this bloody, harsh, but ultimately hopeful tale.

I just could not get into this book. The narrative style and how empty the characters felt was probably why.
I did not care about anything, and that is probably why I had a hard time getting into the book

I found the book hard to get into. I had a hard time with some of the description and the overall theme wasn’t my style.

I read a lot of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction. Enough that the I get a bit tetchy that for the most part, publishers and libraries just don’t acknowledge the End of the World as a genre. Enough also that I was starting to think that there wasn’t really a lot of room left in the genre for something different, something innovative.

Reading Wonderblood has, happily, cured me of the latter complaint. It’s got an amazingly quirky bent on the traditional dystopia, a dark, sometimes bleak humour for much of its length, and characters that live on long after the final page. It also has some of the most deliciously worded descriptive passages that I’ve read in a long time.

The world of Wonderblood is set against an ancient apocalyptic plague called Bent Head which lives on in the Earth and still infects the unwary. Mankind has lost its science and now worships the astronauts and space shuttles that religion insists are going to return to Earth someday. Wandering carnivals battle each other and collect the heads of their enemies (and friends) to capture their magic. Medicine is outlawed. There is only the carnivals, the King, and Wonderblood.

I was hooked by the first page and I highly enjoyed this book. Some other reviewers have found it somewhat confronting, and I can agree with that, but that quality lends the story a serious weight to what could fall into a heap of silliness otherwise. Its inventiveness and intriguing characters had me turning pages with eagerness.

After the first third, however, the story seems to bog down in detail and character and lore. Events happen while it feels that the story isn’t moving - almost all of the remainder of the story, while well-written and engaging, seems to become filler.

Happily, the chaotic, bloody and strangely satisfying ending abruptly takes over and Wonderblood regains some much needed momentum. It ends with the obvious promise of a sequel (or probably a trilogy), though it is an end with a full stop. Many questions remain to be answered, but if Wonderblood never had a sequel it would still make a good read, unlike some that seem to be one story cut into three with my four-year old’s random scissor skills.

This book is proof that we’re only scratching the surface of the storytelling possibilities of the genre. Despite its faults I very much encourage others who enjoy the genre to take Wonderblood onboard and fall into the spell its author weaves.

I am a fan of dystopian novels, and this one looked intriguing. But I just couldn't do it. Mostly, it lacks any real character building. leaving me in this bleak world where I didn't feel a connection to any of the characters. The world is bleak. The human race is decimated by mad cow, but no one remembers that was the cause. Doctors are banned and Cape Canaveral is the center of a strange religion of sorts. They believe the 5 space shuttles and their astronauts will one day return to save them. The ground is poisoned and they are trying to purify it with blood, which is really just making it worse (though they don't know that). The novel could have been really interesting with this premise, but it failed to deliver. I stopped at 45% and even that was a struggle.