Rating: 4.5/5
I received audio eARC for my honest opinion.

This book is about Nhika who believes that she is the last of her kind, a Bloodcarver. She has the power to alter human biology with just her touch, but where she lives, they do not see her as a healer but a monster that can kill. For her to survive in a city of people who want her dead, she must act like a doctor and scams people for their money until one night when she saves a woman from death and the husband calls the bonecravers after her. Now she must escape them and what better way to do that is to trick nobility into thinking that she can heal someone that she isn’t sure she can, but to only find out a secret that she was not expecting.

This is Vanessa Le debut book and let me tell you it did not feel as though it was her first. The way that this author writes was done so well with the right amount of details to the characters and the plot, the way that she brings the characters emotions to life, the magic system being unique and well developed. The characters were well developed throughout the book as well and this will leave you wanting more right away and not wanting the book to end.

I loved Nhika right away in this book. She is a little feisty, not blind to the world around her and the events taking place, she is not remorseful for having to live her life as she has too because she knows she must survive the world around her but at the same time she knows that she could meet death any day as well. I loved that she was funny to be around, with her banter, her questions about the medical field and the changes that she was not aware of. I loved that in this book you will have the story told from her point of view and I was not saddened by it not having a dual POV, but I can say I am hopeful to have the next book told by Ven Kochin POV. That is all I can about Kochin because I will give away spoilers if I say more, but I will say I hated him at first but came to understand his reasons and even a bit loved him for it.

I loved the ending and how Vanessa left it. I truly can’t wait to see what will happen in the next book. This book is perfect for lovers of great characters, amazing world building, just a bit of romance, found family, and great character growth. Also, look at that cover, it's amazing!

The narrator of this book did an excellent job, I felt everything the characters were feeling and VyVy Nguyen really helped to bring this book to life for me. I could close my eyes and the scenes were playing out right before me.

I want to thank NetGalley and Macmillan for the opportunity to review this book.

This story had me on the hook from the beginning.

When Nhika is taken by some thugs and sold for her abilities to heal, she must help a rich family figure out who their father's murderer. But not everyone is who them seem they are.

This book had me guessing who did it the whole time while also intersecting a beautiful story about accepting your gifts, found family, and dared to dream for a better life.

Can't wait for book 2.

Thank you to netgalley and Macmillan Audio | Macmillan Young Listeners for allowing me to listen to this book. This book deserves all the praise. The magic system was chef's kiss. The world building was just beyond compare. Can't wait to read the next book.

The Last Bloodcarver-Duology #1

Author: Vanessa Le

Publication date: 3-19-24, read 3-17-24

Format: audiobook

Run time: 10:34

Setting: Theumas

Source: Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this ALC❤️ ! I voluntarily give an honest review and all opinions expressed are my own.

The narrator is VyVy Nguyen who read all the characters.. I believe the voice fit the characters with Nhika(the female protagonist) and Mimi (teenager who buys Nhika) as standouts. Their voices were the most distinct, but I could easily tell the difference between all characters. The reading style brought the story to life and the pacing was great and flowed easily with the story. The narration and the author were in sync, and they fit together perfectly.

The audiobook's flow very fasted paced. The narrator paused and announced every time a new chapter came. The book had a table of contents which helped me follow along .

Nhika is a heart-soother also known as a blood carver, who can heal or hurt with just a touch. Her entire family has been killed, so she has to support herself makes house calls healing people . One of her medical appointments goes bad and she is captured by "The Butchers"-no more than underground thugs. They plan to sell her to the highest bidder, so a teenage girl named Mimi offers the most. Mimi's father Congmi just died in a car accident, and the driver Hendon who survived needs healing. Nhika plans the political game with the aristocratic family, learns more about her gift, and her family's homeland Yarong. Ven Kochin is a physician's aide to Dr. Santo who is the research director. Ven is drawn to Nhika, but she is betrayed causing terrible consequences.

Overall, this was a beautifully written novel with fantasy, magic, action, and even a little romance. I can't wait for the second book! I would recommend listening to the audiobook because you can adjust the speed, skip parts easily (if desired), and picture the characters more vividly.

The Diverse Baseline

February Prompt C: A book by a BIPOC author with found family

★★★½ rounded up

In a sea of extremely mediocre YA Asian Fantasy debuts, The Last Bloodcarver does the impossible and draws me in. As often is the case, Nhika falls into the trap of being naïve and cliché. She is hoodwinked by multiple people, before coming into her own.

As the wave of Vietnamese diaspora fiction continues to hit the shelves, I have been eagerly waiting for more Southeast Asian lore to make its way into my hands. Since I grew up in the West, inundated with Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, and am slowly but surely educating myself on East Asian lore, I find myself searching for the myths of my homeland. This is a start. (Make sure you pick up The Crossbow of Destiny in August.)

Where so many of the Asian fantasies seem to go wrong is the glorification of colonization. I will be the first to admit that I was worried about how this would turn out. Fear not, Nhika is very proud to be Yarongese. As she was born in Theumas, she has never even seen her oft dreamt about homeland. She barely speaks the language. She feels unconnected to her mother and grandmother's land and healing practices. This obviously hit me in the feels.

Nhika's gift deals with healing. She is from a land of magic. The place she lives deals more with science, and these people see her as other. Deep in this underworld of training and secrets, she meets a dark haired mysterious stranger. Again, fret not. I'm eager to see how the author will continue this story.

I really enjoyed the magic system in this worl and thought it was really cool. I don’t love the cover art but I did like the narrator. Solid read.

What if you had the power to heal that could also be used to harm? Nhika has this power and believes she is the last of her kind. She ends up saving a life, solving a murder, and sacrificing everything for love. Good story with well developed characters.

Despite the unique setting, I never really got into either the characters or the plot. Both felt flat, somewhat forced, and lacking in depth and interest. In many ways, this is YA fantasy by the numbers: feisty lead heroine doing stupid things to prove she is 'strong' matched with emo love interest who has the emotional maturity of a 2 year old.

Story: Nhika's country was overrun and the cultural magic outlawed/wielders murdered. Now, in a new country, she fights to survive in the slums while hiding her ability to hearthsoothe - also called bloodcarving. When she breaks a personal rule and tries to heal someone with her magic, everything goes awry and she is imprisoned. But fate takes twisty turns and soon she will be thrust into high society, embroiled in a murder mystery that might just involve the mysterious medical assistant she finds attractive.

At its heart, this is a murder mystery as Nhika tries to solve a case involving the dead scion of a large automaton manufacturing empire. Although there are some steampunk type of elements in here, they are really just window dressing and thrown around in the background/never explored. There is the usual rationalization against magic vs technological innovation within a pseudo Viet Nam type of setting. It all sounds better than it actually read, however.

The characters are flat and not really helped by a narrator whose reading on the audio version was very wooden. Nhika does far too many "too stupid to live" actions while often being saved by deus ex machina situations. The love interest is the cliché rude smug emo boy - giving us no reason to really like him. Honestly, the romance in this is lifeless and very inexplicable; neither character's interest in the other realistic.

I think the big issue I had with the book is that the ideas and themes are very conflicted. E.g., everyone gets upset about a murder - and decide that murdering someone else is the answer. The heartsoothers are supposed to be life savers and in tune with nature but get their power from murdering animals, the bigger the better, to power their magic. It left a bad taste in my mouth and further disenfranchised me from the story.

I found that I just didn't like the characters and therefore lost interest in following the story. The murder mystery wasn't that compelling and everyone felt very immature or simplistic in their actions (there just wasn't a lot of depth). Compounding the issue was a very lifeless read from the narrator on the audio version, which I would not recommend. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

A YA fantasy set in a Vietnamese-inspired world, complete with blood magic and healing, secret identities, and a multi-layered murder mystery, this book was a fun read! I enjoyed the immersive nature of the world, and the evolution of Nhika’s relationships with characters like Kochin and Mimi. I do think there were a few lulls in the middle of the story that felt a bit repetitive, given that I was patiently waiting for Nhika’s healing journey for the Congmi family to begin while the story continued to focus on purely social politicking and historical context in the world. It’s all relevant to the overall plot, so I don’t take immense issue with it, but there were periods where I felt antsy about what was coming next.

Admittedly, some of the writing felt *very* YA, which in itself is not bad, but there was a good bit of telling and not showing that sometimes made it a bit hard to stay engaged, particularly given that I was listening to an audio version of the novel. That being said, the narrator did a great job with the story, and added life to the tale as it went on.

On the whole, this book was exciting to read and the ending set us up for a potential sequel that I would be even more interested in!!! What a cliffhanger, truly. This one gets 3.5⭐ from me, rounded to 3 on Goodreads.

*Thank you again to NetGalley and the publishers for this audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

Picked this book up because 1) the cover interested me and 2) it had one of the most interesting plot lines I've heard in a very long time. Reminiscent of blood bending in Avatar the Last Airbender, Nhika is a bloodcarver. However, she can control basically every part of the human body, not just blood.

Nhika was a very interesting character who was a little bit too rude for my taste at the beginning, but I also understood why she acted that way. It would be awful to have watched your entire family die at one point or another at such a young age, let alone having to deal with all the people who are actively trying to kill her for something she was born into. So overall she's pretty badass, but I still had some minor irritation with her for the majority of the book.

Ven Kochin was such an annoying character and it literally made no sense to me why Nhika ever started to develop feelings for him. Their first meeting is kind, but everything after that is so rude that I didn't understand why she was still interested in him.

The other side characters are fine - none of them had enough personality (besides Mimi) for me to care about any of them too much.

Ultimately the story was fine but THE ENDING??? WHAT??? I mean, I feel like we all know what will/has to happen, but it was kind of silly for it to end where it did. You can pick this one up if you want to, but I don't feel like it's a necessity.

"Nhika is a bloodcarver, who can alter human biology with just a touch. But in her of Theumas, she is seen not as a healer, but as a monster. When Nhika is caught using her bloodcarving abilities during a sham medical appointment, she's captured by an underground seller and bidding on her begins. Lucky for Nhika, an aristocratic family purchases her to heal the last witness of their father’s murder. But as Nhika dives into the investigation and the company of Theumas' wealthiest district she is confronted with parallels to her own dark past. And when she meets a frustrating physician's aide, Ven Kochin, she’s forced to question the true intent behind this murder. When Nhika discovers that Kochin is not who he claims to be, and that there is an evil dwelling in Theumas that runs much deeper than the murder of one man, she must decide where her heart, and her allegiance, truly lie."

The premise of the story is intriguing and as a doctor myself, I love the idea and descriptions of bloodcarving. I find the mixture of science and artistry fascinating and so much fun to read. I think the cast of characters is fun, if not occasionally annoying (though I know that is probably intentional to highlight the class differences). I did find the story itself a bit predictable up until the very end. But man, that cliffhanger has me eagerly awaiting the next book. Our protagonist is easy to understand and root for. The setting of our story leaves some questions in the best way because it gives our story room to grow into the next book. The connections between characters are varied, enticing, and well thought out. All in all a very enjoyable sci-fi story.

I love a folklore inspired story! The struggles of racism and classism with a little mix of found family had me hooked. The magic system of heartsoothing/bloodcarving was very unique to me and I appreciated showing it in positive and negative lights. The differing opinions of those with be magic and without, and even differing for how those with it were raised was a refreshing eye opener. The themes of generational trauma and the grief and healing journey from that were depicted throughout and were thoughtful. Along with the idea of loneliness in that grief and how growth can set you free. There’s a lot of internalized pain from these things but allowing others in can help you through it. The world were set in has been fleshed out beautifully. I also loved the mix of classic traditional healing methods vs the influx of modern technology - there was a great juxtaposition of the two.

I really loved that book. The world, the magic system, the characters, I really loved it. I was sucked in from the very beginning. I loved the main character so much, she was such a baddass and I really fell for her. I was really surprised by the twists over and over again. It was just so good. I didn't know what to expect when I started the book and it kept surprising me in the best ways.
I cannot wait for the sequel.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. It took me a little while to get into the narration of this book, but I think the intended audience will find it enjoyable. VyVy Nguyen's voice is well suited to Nhika's character. I very much enjoyed the world building, learning about the tech and the lore and how they interact with one another, but unfortunately the plot felt pretty predictable to me for a good chunk of the story. I will say that the ending was enough of a surprise to keep me interested in the second book, and curious to see how the world will expand. I also hope we get to know side characters more in depth in the next book. While I liked the main character well enough I didn't always feel particularly connected to her, and the romance aspect was rather sudden to me, though somewhat understandable. I think Nhika's internal reflection does a good enough job of addressing her own feelings about the romance, Vanessa Le does a fantastic job of setting tone and creating atmosphere with descriptions of history, technological developments, and social structures within this world and I hope to get even more of these details in future titles.

I enjoyed listening to the audiobook. The narrator did a great job and the pacing of the story was great. The story was amazing, the main female character had a lot of character development throughout the story. Honestly didn’t expect the culprit to be who it was. The ending really made me think about what I would do if I was in that situation. Would I be able to use a gift like that just good?

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing to listen to the audiobook!

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this ARC Audio Copy!

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish, though I an still confused and baffled by the ending. I did not see that coming at all. I have waited 3 days to post this review but I still don't know how I truly feel about this book but I do know that I will be thinking about it for a long time.

The Narrator did a wonderful job with this book and the world building was fantastic. There was a lot of depth to the characters and their flaws as well as their growth throughout the book. It also touches on classism and racism in a way that really helps you understand what it is like to be in the characters shoes, and I think it was done beautiful for a YA novel, where the point was made but it did not make the characters entire personality about their hardships either.

I really appreciate that the book was not solely written as a vehicle to the romance, but instead it was added as an enhancement to the story and represented the longing that is felt when you feel completely alone in the world. It made the love story believable, but also the story could have held up completely without it which is not common these days.

There were beautiful moments to the book but it was a lot darker than I expected in parts, definitely check out the trigger warnings.

I tried. I really tried, but this book was so weird and gross. Maybe I just didn't get it but this book definitely was not for me.

This is a solidly unique feeling fantasy with quite the cliffhanger.
I enjoyed the Vietnamese inspired aspects of this book, I always love seeing different cultures repented in a fantasy setting.
I'm glad to see this will be a duology because I'm not sire I could handle another cliffhanger this size.
Romance is not a big plot point for me usually but the romance in this went from compete ass for much of the book to almost insta-love? It was distracting. I would have rather had no romance sub-plot honestly.
I do look forward to where the next book leads.

4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) Bloodcarvers are known to be ruthless monsters that can alter your body with just a touch. However, Nhika was taught as a child that bloodcarving (or blood-soothing as she was taught) is for healing and good.

After being arrested for using her magic, Nhika is taken to be sold to the highest bidder, a wealthy young woman buys her. The young woman and her brother are kind and are hoping she can help solve a murder mystery by healing a man who was at the scene. Nhika is given everything she’s never had in her simple life and her attachment to the family grows strong. Initially she is not able to help them but is given a library full of medical books for her to research in hopes to find a way.

Because the Congmis are kind and generous, she finds a contentment she hasn’t felt in years. This helps her study endlessly on the brain and the body systems that provide her with information she’s never known. But also opens her heart to friendships and relationships because these people accept her for who she is.

The classism is a large part of the story and it is portrayed well by showing the two extremes. It also shows the hearts of people, good or bad, regardless of that position.

The science Nhika was researching and how her mind is opened begins a rush of knowledge into her. Then something sinister arises and she’s caught between two choices. This revelation spurs the mystery into another direction while keeping the intrigue high. She has searched for belonging, acceptance and people to love her for who she is. Now she has very difficult decisions to make.

If you’re looking for a unique story filled with magic, strong spirit and found family, you will love this one!

AUDIO REVIEW: VyVy Nguyen was perfect for the voices of teens but also adults. She excelled in speed or intensity in all the right places to add that extra entertainment. My only complaint would be to add more Asian accent to the story but it did not deter my entertainment in any way.

Thanks to NetGalley for the audio ARC!

This was exactly what I wanted it to be, cream of the crop for YA that is still super enjoyable for adults. The magic system was fascinating, the story compelling, and the characters fascinating. Did I see the plot twist coming? Mostly, though not fully! The ending left my jaw on the floor...I did NOT see that part coming for sure. And the romance....it was beautiful in how it bloomed from rivals/enemies to respect and understanding, and eventually into love as more and more came to light.

This was an incredible book, especially for a debut. I really think everyone that enjoys fantasy and medical dramas would really enjoy this - it didn't read young but was still extremely accessible and easy to consume. It was beautifully written, the pacing was perfect, and my interest was captive the moment it started. You jump right into the action but never feel confused, and Le does an amazing job of showing, not telling, when explaining magic and worldbuilding.

Seriously, this is one of the best YA Fantasy books I've read in ages and I cannot recommend it highly enough!