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Master of Iron book review

 


I read the first book in this duology, Blade of Secrets, in March last year so when we got to March 2024 and I still hadn’t read Master of Iron it felt like the perfect time to finally pick it up. It continued on in ways I didn’t anticipate but loved and felt like the perfect ending to these characters' story. 


I won’t give you the synopsis of this book as it would spoil book 1 but Blade of Secrets follows Ziva who is a magical bladesmith that struggles with social anxiety, but when she creates a blade to be more dangerous than expected for a warlord who seems not to have the intentions they say they have so with her sister, a scholar and mercenary she must go on a quest to protect her world from this danger. This book follows on from Blade of Secrets with very little, if any time in between the books. 


I think this is one of my fav YA fantasy duologies because it has such strong characters, interesting magic and a plot that kept me reading. It also has some really good anxiety representation that I don’t normally expect to see in fantasy. 


We follow Ziva’s perspective in this story as like in Blade of Secrets which works really well for this story as it means you can understand what is going on in her head and as she is in the throes of what is going on it keeps you in the action aware of what is happening with all our major action. There are times you are still kept in the dark of what is going on but they way it is done works really well and as Tricia Levenseller has done this with all of the books I have read from her and it works really well for me and I look forward to the last two backlist books I have to read and getting to know those characters. 


As previously mentioned I really like these characters. Ziva is such a strong character who we see grow loads during the 2 books and it is really good to see. She has a lot more confidence in herself by the end of the story and it allows her to do what she needs to do. I also really liked Temra, Ziva’s sister, we obviously see her through Ziva’s eyes but it was good to see her grow as well and she definitely became more of her own person by the end of this. Kellyn and Petrik were the second half of this travelling group and while Ziva’s opinions of these two changed over the course of the duology I continued to really like them and root for them. Ziva was a character I really connected to but I don’t think I have a favourite out of this group of 4. The other characters we were introduced to during this second book were also really interesting and I liked many of them. 


I really enjoyed this book and am so glad to have now read it. The magic was explored more in a way that had me really interested and I would love to go back to this world and see more of these characters with magic one day in the future, it may be one of my favourite magic systems from recent YA fantasy books that I have read. It would have been nice to have gotten to this book earlier than I did but it was also really cool to read books one and two a year apart and see how I’ve changed with my reading in that time. 


Overall a fantastic YA fantasy duology that I highly recommend and am so glad to have finished. I cannot wait to read more Tricia Levenseller because everytime I read from her she becomes more and more of an autobuy author. This was an easy 4.5 stars.


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