Gripping, defiant, and wholly original. Loved the focus on sibling bonds & the darker undercurrents of religion and corruption running through the prose from the very beginning. Really impressive and tightly-woven world building—perhaps a bit overwhelming at times, but brilliantly imaginative and exciting nonetheless.

A great Weird Western with Arcane-like vibes, THE BLOODY AND THE DAMNED by Becca Coffindaffer is a story at its heart about the love between siblings and the reasons we fight.

this book is so exciting i cannot wait to read it. the premise is so promising.

immediately, i really like the first person present tense, makes it very urgent.

i really found the prosperity gospel part compelling, especially during a time where evangelism is very much steeped in human greed. sci fi is truly not my vibe, but i liked how it felt more accessible.

the characters were very interesting and i really loved seeing them develop and be more vulnerable.

I was a little bored by this world building at times. The sister relationships shone the most to me in this book, with the hints to a romance/romances taking a backseat. I feel like we got scraps and I wanted more from this, especially by the end of the story. Overall things got good at the end and reminded me of Gearbreakers or Evangeline.

"Unmaking seasons. Every quite, stable period in your life would be followed a season of unmasking, where upheaval and chaos and change would puch at your edges and force you to grow"

Valene (Val) is just a girl trying to survive and make enough paper to allow her sisters a better life by becoming the butcher. When everything is taken from her.

The Bloody and the Damned is a well written book that had clear language and was easy to understand. However, the world building was a bit difficult for me to fully grasp and I found myself constantly going back to review the details.

It was hard for me to fall in love with the other characters because Val's relationship with them were not as personable. Val would keep them at arms lengths to protect them, but it also made it hard for me to care about them because if Val didn't how can I?

Valene's character did not show as much character growth as I was hoping for. Only in the end did she show she did not have to do everything by herself.

This book had high hopes for me but unfortunately I just couldn't get into it. I think there was too much information thrown at me from the start that I felt overwhelmed by it. The writing of the story itself was good, I liked how descriptive it was, but I wqs also I little lost. I think I just was not the right audience for this book overall.