Book Review: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman.

Product details:
Publisher: Atom.
Release date: January 19th 2012.
Paperback, 434 pages.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Ages: 12+
Source: Received from publisher for review.

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up.  When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love.  When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark.

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead.  His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

Complex, cryptic and captivating, Robin Wasserman’s The Book of Blood and Shadow is an intelligent and intriguing work, rich in historical detail and brimming with the kind of page-turning plot twists that demand reading late into the night. Fans of The Secret History will love this tale of blood and alchemy, secrets and death, all set against the mystical backdrop of Prague.

Life can change in the blink of an eye. High school student and Latin scholar, Nora Kane, knows this better than most.  With her home life in ruins following a family tragedy, Nora finds her solace in study, undertaking a Latin translation project along with best friend Chris and soon-to-be love interest, Max. But what begins as a safe haven soon turns into a nightmare, leaving Chris dead, Max on the run, and Nora in fear of her life. With time running out, and a shady secret society hot on her heels, Nora must solve the mystery of the seven hundred year old Book of Blood and Shadow and clear the name of the boy she loves.

The Book of Blood and Shadow starts with a bang – we know from page one that there has been a murder - but after this the pace slows as we learn of the long hidden secrets contained in the letters and manuscript that the teens have been working on.  Nora soon learns that these secrets are bigger than anything she could have imagined, and that there are people in the world who will kill for them. As her search for the truth leads her to Prague, it turns out too that everyone in Nora’s world from, from Chris’s girlfriend Adriane to his cousin Eli, have secrets, and its up to Nora to figure out, who, if anyone, she can trust. And the answers aren’t always as clear-cut as you might think.  This is a clever book that will demand your attention from start to finish with its intricately constructed plot, intelligent prose and myriad of plot twists that are both complex and genius.  

If there’s one qualm I have in regards to The Book of Blood and Shadow, it’s that the characters and their voices are not entirely relatable. Nora stands alone in her world, her parents don’t have a big part to play in her life and her voice, for me, was not realistically teen. This is, explained by circumstances in her background, but in places I had trouble thinking of this as an entirely YA book.  With its complex plot and sophisticated prose, The Book of Blood and Shadow has major crossover appeal, although I think it is perhaps suited more to the older teen than the younger set.

You might also like to read: Author Robin Wasserman on the strange-but-true historical background of The Book of Blood and Shadow.