Blurb:

Whatever power you think you have is an illusion.
Whatever your dreams are, they belong to me.
And wherever you run, I am already there waiting for you.

Since Zilan entered the world of royal alchemists, she has learned firsthand that alchemy comes at a price. She has lost her family and her beloved prince in her search for justice against the evil Empress. All Zilan wants now is to find some way to bring them back. Resurrection is her specialty, after all.

In search of Penglai Island, where the infamous myth says life can be fully restored, Zilan starts a new adventure. But Penglai Island has been kept well hidden by a group of unpredictable, and often dangerous, alchemists. Uncovering the secret means challenging some of the most powerful alchemists to ever live. And when old threats come back to haunt Zilan, she will have to decide just how much she is willing to sacrifice to save her loved ones—and the practice of alchemy that has long defined her and the world around her.

This gripping duology closer by the acclaimed author of The Keeper of Night is not to be missed!

Review:

I received The Blood Orchid as an ARC at the same time my fellow reviewer, Amber Toro did. (Great person. She wrote a book too, you know?) So we jumped into a buddy read, and while not a race, I left her in the dust and went full steam ahead in this. From start to finish, I have loved this duology. There is often a bit of dip with the second/final book in a series and that just wasn't the case at all here. My last message in our buddy read was me just saying how much I loved it.

If you have not read The Scarlet Alchemist, I would strongly suggest you don’t read further than this because there will naturally be some spoilers. If you’re unsure about The Scarlet Alchemist, have this review I wrote for it last year on GR because SFF Insiders didn’t exist then.

Now don’t read further than here.

Final warning.

Spoilers ahead!

Actually before the spoilers, let’s have a quick recap. Zilan has been named a royal alchemist, she made a duck out of blood called Durian, accidentally became the crown prince’s concubine but then they developed a real relationship. Her siblings (actually cousins but this is a cultural thing) aren’t happy with this. They are taken by the Empress, who is a power hungry, gold eating, piece of work. She kills everybody and their sister (literally), Zilan kills her, resurrects her sister in the Empress’ body and awkwardly has no choice but to put her brother in the crown prince’s body. And now here we are.

Like the first book, there is a lot of real world history and legends (like, gasp!, Penglai Island) weaved throughout. We know Penglai Island, “where it's rumoured life can be fully restored”, is Zilan’s main goal (I wonder what she’s going to do there) and that “old threats come back to haunt her”. Consequently, we’ve got a lot happening in this book. 

We meet a few new alchemists and I was equal parts fascinated and terrified of them. The Sandstone Alchemist was just so interesting, as was the Arcane Alchemist, but the Silver Alchemist? She was pure intrigue and horror. If Kylie wrote a book following those three before we came across them, I would go broke buying every copy produced in languages I don't even speak. 

As for what’s haunting her? Well you can take a guess there. 

But guessing aside, we have the fallout from the decree banning life gold happening around all of this. The rich and powerful take this about as well as you’d expect, so alchemists are now a hiding class. You know who is really bad at being lowkey and inconspicuous? Zilan. This hiding alchemists side of things ended up being super key, even though I’ll admit at the start I was like ‘Great, we’ll have a bunch of close calls with them being captured and ‘I’ll never make life gold again!’ or something.’ In your face, past me! You didn’t see any of it coming! Especially that one returning character who ultimately makes for great banter and also loves Durian - as everyone with sense should! Let’s be clear, I mean Durian the duck, not durian the ‘corpse fruit’ as Wenshu calls it, which is both valid and true. 

Zilan continues to just be a great MC. She’s clever but she’s also riddled with doubt, which is fair since she got everyone killed, and riddled with guilt, because again she got everyone killed. But oooooh she’s so clever and that meant I did not always see how she was going to get out of certain things when she did. I feel like it’s very important to say, Kylie didn’t have her doing anything that you felt was ridiculously far fetched. It was just using things like tethers, pockets, fighting fire…with a lot more fire, also ghosts with fire and alchemy with…eggs? It makes sense in the book, I promise. 

I had one tiny complaint which was I didn’t really enjoy the narrative from a particular character and I really can’t say more than that without REALLY spoiling things for you. That’s not to say I thought it was bad, but it was like the flat part of a roller coaster that is otherwise just a crazy fun ride. However,  I did think that Kylie did a great job making the voice change abrupt and fitting. When we finish with Hong's POV, I think that furthered my opinion that Kylie's ability to shift the voice to match the character's POV is flawless.

The pieces from The Scarlet Alchemist and the in the moment seemingly unimportant interactions/dialogue that are crucial later were perfect. It made for a lot of eyebrow raising moments of ‘Oh. My. WHAT!’ The historical notes at the end provided further background to the elements of the story that were already so strong. This was a brilliant book to follow on from The Scarlet Alchemist and overall comes together as a phenomenal duology.

The Blood Orchid is out 22 October 2024