[ARC] The Blacksmith Queen, by G.A. Aiken | ARC Book Review

Hello friends! Welcome back to my blog. This is my third post today, holy moly!

In this post I have my ARC Book Review of

The Blacksmith Queen, by G.A. Aiken.

The Blacksmith Queen is the first book in The Scarred Earth Saga.

Trigger Warnings: Blood, Fighting, Murder, Gore, Abuse, Stabbing, Sex.

A huge Thank You to Kensington Books, via Netgalley, for allowing me to read The Blacksmith Queen by G.A. Aiken in exchange for an honest review.
This in no way has impacted my review.

When a prophesy brings war to the Land of the Black Hills, Keeley Smythe must join forces with a clan of mountain warriors who are really centaurs in a thrilling new fantasy romance series from New York Times bestselling author G.A. Aiken.

The Old King Is Dead

With the demise of the Old King, there’s a prophesy that a queen will ascend to the throne of the Black Hills. Bad news for the king’s sons, who are prepared to defend their birthright against all comers. But for blacksmith Keeley Smythe, war is great for business. Until it looks like the chosen queen will be Beatrix, her younger sister. Now it’s all Keeley can do to protect her family from the enraged royals.

Luckily, Keeley doesn’t have to fight alone. Because thundering to her aid comes a clan of kilt-wearing mountain warriors called the Amichai. Not the most socially adept group, but soldiers have never bothered Keeley, and rough, gruff Caid, actually seems to respect her. A good thing because the fierce warrior will be by her side for a much longer ride than any prophesy ever envisioned …

Publication Date: August 27, 2019.

The Blacksmith Queen is a book I wanted to try on a whim. I knew that there was a chance that I would end up enjoying The Blacksmith Queen (TBQ), so I really didn’t hold TBQ to any standard of mine.

To say something to start off my review for The Blacksmith Queen…G.A. Aiken didn’t hold anything back. So if you were to read The Blacksmith Queen, you can expect fighting, blood, gore, murder, abuse, stabbings, sex…..and so much more.

There are quite a few things that I didn’t expect from The Blacksmith Queen. Namely, that there are more than a handful (5) of different character view points. Secondly the story progressed in a way that I did not expect. at. all. And the third thing that caught me slightly off guard was the slow-burn romance that Keeley and the love interest fell into.

Keeley’s story holds many different points of view, and we read these different view points often. There’s never a view point that we read from, and then they’re one and done. So I quite liked that the view points were repeating, but not in an order that we could predict. And yes, this is Keeley’s story, but with all these different POVs we really get a round’a’bout feeling of The Blacksmith Queen as a whole.

While I didn’t predict anything would happen, or even where the story would go, I did not expect that Keeley’s story would be a freaking whirlwind. The Blacksmith Queen was actually go-go-go non-stop throughout the entirety of this book. The progress of the story was surprising to me, and I truly enjoyed where this story went.

Within The Blacksmith Queen there’s a real sense of a true family, and what they’ll do to protect one another in the name of familial love. Honestly, the relationships that take place in Keeley’s story were great to read about.

The second-to-last thing that I expected from The Blacksmith Queen was romance. But there it was. I could tell that the starting of feelings were happening on one side of things, so I knew it was a possibility that it would happen. I just didn’t expect it to be so freaking sweet. Especially in The Blacksmith Queen since this story is brutal.

There’s one last thing that I adored about this novel, and that is the different, non-human species that were involved within The Blacksmith Queen. Reading about them, and seeing how they acted was another facet of the story that I genuinely didn’t expect–but still really enjoyed.

The Blacksmith Queen turned out to be nothing as I expected it to be! And for that, I am so thankful. I was never bored while I was reading The Blacksmith Queen; it’s endlessly entertaining–which is perfect if you don’t mind a lot of gore. The romance was something else that I liked about Keeley’s story, was the “fell-into-each other” romance.