Bloody hell! This novel completely caught me off guard. The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier is a dystopian science fiction read that features strong female characters who fight and topple over a corporation controlled by evil, cruel individuals.

The story followed Willa Mae Wallace, who supported herself and her grandchild Isaiah by working as a 'reaper' for Patriot. The reapers' job was to collect blood every The Draw. Because of war, the mandatory draw, which was also called 'The Harvest,' was established to help people who were sick because of radiation. Each blood donation a person gave was rewarded by incentives which people could use for their everyday needs. Blood became a product which people were willing to sell. This caused the division of society by blood type. When Willa witnessed an accident that uncovered an awful truth, she was on the run and seeked the help of the notorious blood-hacker named The Locksmith.

With its original and unique premise, I was instantly hooked. The world building and setting were brilliant and well-detailed. Even with its intricate setting, the book was fast paced, and I liked how the secrets and surprises were placed just at the right time. There was even an instant where I had to pause for a moment to process what I just read. It was very unexpected, and I did not see it coming. Moreover, the author did a great job describing and potraying a country which was devastated by war. It showed inequality and what people could do to adapt and live.

One of the things I like about this book is the main character. Most dystopian novels I read featured young, attractive ones as their main character. However, in this one, Willa is a 60-year-old grandmother who would do anything to provide for her grandchild. It was refreshing to read someone who had wisdom and did not do impulsive actions and decisions. I also enjoyed the character developments. Lastly, side characters were amazing and interesting, too.

Overall, The Phlebotomist is an interesting story in a dystopian setting. I am looking forward to its sequel.

5/5 stars!

This was fabulous! I finished this in about 3 days.
The concept is amazing and thank you, dear author, for giving us a bad-ass pink-haired grandmother to save the world.
I won't spoil too much of the story, but if you're into dystopian with a scientific twist and lovable characters, THIS IS IT!

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5, really, but such fun that I rounded up. Difficult to review without spoiling some of the most enjoyable reveals, but it's a bit silly, a bit queer, a lot gleefully gory - and the main characters are in their 50s and 60s, kicking ass and taking names and looking after everybody. If the blurb catches your interest, I can confirm it's worth a read.

"The bombs that followed were the natural sequelae of the first, with the country now engaged in a never-ending war with someone, though the authorities were cagey about saying who. They justified their surreptitiousness under the umbrella of protecting intelligence, and with the press largely dismantled, the public had long given up in pushing for answers."

The Phlebotomist starts out fantastically, atmospherically describing a dystopian future where several cities in America (I'm guessing, the country is never really specified) were blown away by huge nuclear explosions. The people who still live there, in the so-called Grey Zones, need a lot of donor blood to refresh their irradiated bodies. The populace of unbombed cities have to mandatorily give blood, but also can give extra blood for money. Society is now divided by the bloodtype one has, as some types can be used by anybody, the rest become increasingly less useful.

"When Claude arrived, Willa traded the woman’s blood bag for the gelpack, a small syrette filled with carbs and epinephrine used to jumpstart folks who sold more than their bodies could give. She broke its cap, pushed the two tiny needles into the skin on the inside of the woman’s arm, and squeezed the contents into her basilic vein."

The phlebotomist of The Phlebotomist is an older woman, Willa, who used to be a professional phlebotomist long before the Chrysalis (the word used for the first bombings). She works at one of the bloodbanks, which are run by a corporation calling itself Patriot, that also seems to function as the government.

Soon things take a strange turn, and Willa finds out that the bloodgiving and Patriot might not be what they seemed. The first thing that now probably springs to your mind, is the correct one, I'm afraid. I was quite disappointed, especially after a great opening.

From here the narrative logic starts to really slip, there are too many inconsistencies, and the characters are dull and don't develop. The worst is Willa, who becomes whinier and whinier the further you read. The last third of the book makes all kinds of illogical jumps to push the book towards its end. That said, I did like the very end of the book - it ends in what I thought is the only real logical way possible.

2.5 stars

The Phlebotomist follows Willa, a Reaper, a woman who works for Patriot drawing blood for the Harvest. In a society separated by blood types, those with a universal donor type are regarded more highly, creating a caste system. When Willa sees a drone meant to be carrying blood crash, Patriot pays her a visit, leading to Willa on the run, teamed up with a blood-hacker, Lock.

The Phlebotomist ticks every box that I want from a science fiction dystopian novel - an intricate social system, power hungry leaders, a bad ass main character seeking to overthrow the leaders, and a whole lot of feeling. Willa might not be your typical dystopian main character - she’s a grandmother in her sixties, wearing a bright pink wig - but that doesn’t stop her from being just as badass as any other dystopian main character you can think of. In fact, it makes her a bit better than most because she’s mature, level headed, and educated. This also cuts out the typical dystopian love triangle we normally get, and this just made me love The Phlebotomist more.

The blood caste system affecting the social stratification was also fascinating. The level of detail that went into the blood was incredible, giving little tidbits at the start of each chapter that give you some more background on what the different types are, and different skills that a Phlebotomist would have. It felt surprisingly educational while being a fast paced story about trying to overthrow Patriot.

There were some surprising twists throughout the book too, that take it to a new level of dystopian horror almost, and honestly, while I wasn’t expecting it, I was all for it. It suited the story fully, and the twists didn’t feel like they came entirely out of left field just to make the story progress. And for how surprising some of the twists were, and how action packed the story was, there was lot of heart involved. You feel for Willa and Lock, and the hardships they go through. It was a fine balance of cheering them on through all the action, and having your heart hurt, but it balances well and really pulls you in to the story.

The Phlebotomist is one I absolutely recommend for fans of dystopian style books, and especially those that like a touch of horror tossed in for good measure. If you’re looking for a unique main character that you don’t often see in Sci-Fi, Willa is one to remember, and this is absolutely a book worth checking out.

Willa was a professional phlebotomist once, but now she is just a reaper who collects blood for the Patriot. They say it’s for transfusion for those who are in the Gray Zone, and she fully accepts this reasoning behind the blood tax. But what if it wasn’t true?
After reading Peter Watts’ ‘Blindsight’, I wasn’t sure that I’d find another interesting usage of the vampire race. However modern novels thrive to surprise me.
‘The Phlebotomist’ can be viewed as a dystopia, the setting is all there. But I’d like to suggest that this novel isn’t about typical a man against a system conflict. Though you can be lured into such thinking very easily. In my opinion, the novel takes a great time to talk about our dependency on technology. While we become lazy with it, taking technology for granted as some sort of magic, trusting it with our daily life, technology isn’t really a panacea, a cold all-mighty mind. It’s not more infallible than a mere human.
Lock, the hacker, is a bit flat character, but I like the ideas she brings into this story. It’s so entirely doable to crack a complex system that you’d be surprised. Lock’s words made me reflect on the issue that while modern technology is a black box for most of us, it still is very human dependable. If you can crack a person thinking than you can crack a technology too. People leave a bunch of holes that can be used with both good and bad intentions. Nobody is protected against the malicious downfall of the system unless you are educated and prepared enough to live without it. Willa, and Lock, and old-fashioned Ichorwulves were prepared.
As for the novel itself, I found the first part of the book very refreshing and intriguing, but the second part was a bit lacking. The setting is quite unique. Segregation by the blood type isn’t the thing you find often in the fiction (unless we are talking about Japanese fiction). However, it didn’t felt like the idea of this was developed fully to cover the story until the very end. The definition at each chapter beginning was a very nice touch though.
And finally, I just love an image of Willa’s hair. Pink on the old lady’s head. How fascinating! I imagine it’s curly. Thus, I just had to draw a picture of her.
In summary, I enjoyed this book despite slight minuses. It gave some ideas to think about, and strong visual images to linger on.
It was good reading. 3.5 stars in total.

I love a good near-future book, and this one was chilling. A bit of fantasy, a bit of sci-fi, and a bit of dystopia all mingle together for a fascinating read.

Set in a dystopian future, The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier is a book where blood, required for the benefit of the ongoing war, is the main source of income for society.
Willa, the Phlebotomist or Reaper, works to help raise her grandson and keep him safe. Within 24 hours, all of this changes when she finds out more about the world in which she and about things she never knew existed. To stay alive, she teams up with Lock, an ex-marine computer hacker.
Chris Panatier's characters are a welcome change from the usual sci-fi books. Willa is a grandmother who wears a pink wig so her grandson can spot her in a crowd, Lock is a female hacker who does this to feed all of the orphans taken in by her group and Kathy, introduced later on in the book is like a teenage ninja.
The beginning of the book takes a great left turn and then builds a convincing world. Even towards the end, there is a small reveal which allows the potential to explore its history and leaves a couple of threads open to pursue a follow-up or two.
This is a great book that I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would.

In 2067, blood will out. Society is broken down into hierarchies based on blood type, after devastating nuclear attacks have resulted in “Grey Zones,” areas whose inhabitants suffer from all manner of unpleasant, radiation-derived illnesses. Constant transfusions are necessary to sustain these unfortunates, resulting in financial incentives for everyone else to give as much blood as they can. With demand for your particular blood type determining how much you can earn, societal divides have been redrawn in new yet familiar ways, with quality of life dictated by a twist of biological fate.

Working within this dystopian vision of the future is main character Willa Mae Wallace. A phlebotomist with Patriot - the organisation behind the network of blood banks - her only concern in life is providing for her grandson Isaiah. With subtle, incidental details, we infer that Willa is an older character than we might expect from this kind of story. Her fingers are described as arthritic. She has orthopaedic shoes. She wears a nighty to bed. She has a wig, albeit a bright pink one, and out of a combination of choice and necessity (it helps Isaiah find her in a crowd). She has a strongly developed moral compass and is intelligent, compassionate and brave, all of which we’re able to conclude from her actions rather than having it explicitly stated. Her age is never played for laughs, nor does she ever complain about being too old for anything. After countless examples elsewhere of retired police chiefs with weak hearts solving crimes, she is simultaneously a ray of sunshine and a breath of fresh air. Above all, Willa feels like a very real and very wonderful person, never straying into being twee or cutesy.

The level of detail that goes into Willa’s characterisation is continued into the worldbuilding too. Panatier has clearly thought long and hard about the possible ramifications of a world with an economy based on blood trafficking. Black market trading and blood muggings are commonplace, with more complex criminality explored further later on, but it’s the social stratification that is perhaps the most impactful. Not only is this central to much of the story, it provides a unique social commentary on a world that values certain genetic traits more than others. Whilst this isn’t commented on extensively, it doesn’t have to be - the parallels to our own present are sadly all too easy to see. The wealthiest members of society, too, sequester themselves in Capillarian Crest, bribing their way out of donating altogether whilst the rest of the population are sucked dry - this world’s version of (in this case, sanguinary) tax avoidance.

The company behind “The Trade” (as the business of blood donation for cash has come to be known) are also everything you would hope for in a dystopian setting. Their executives are corporate-speak horrors, parroting legal jargon one minute, smiling like catalogue models the next, with an always present air of menace. They seem wildly out of touch with the situation in the real world, with careless faux-pas betraying just how little they associate with those who aren’t at least as successful as they are. They really are a lot of fun, with a few early exchanges between them and Willa allowing Panatier to take some cheeky pot shots at slimy corporate climbers. And of course, no dystopia would be complete without media manipulation - regular “Patriocast” updates remind everyone to do their duty and keep donating, with a grisly list of the fluctuating figures of various cancers in the Grey Zones providing a harrowing added incentive.

A chance discovery involving the science of phlebotomy sets Willa somewhat at odds with Patriot, and she soon finds herself in more trouble than she bargained for, this initial seemingly innocent disagreement spiralling into something far more serious. Clearly not one to skimp on the research side of things, Panatier is more than forthcoming with scientific terms around phlebotomy and blood, but never to the extent where it feels excessive or overwhelming. Chapters begin with a medical dictionary style definition of a word related to blood or blood drawing which pertains to events in the chapter, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely. This helps keep everything very on brand, even in those chapters which don’t feature much to do with phlebotomy. But as well as this, there are subtle instances of the language of blood permeating the prose itself. A group of children, dispersed from the window they were gathered around, then “recongeal” around it. Elsewhere, a flock of birds seems to resemble a platelet. These flourishes are rare, but resonant enough that they really stay with you. Or perhaps it could be said that they get under your skin? Either way, it’s a sign of a writer gleefully and confidently in command of their style.

For all these reasons and more, The Phlebotomist is a unique and hugely accomplished debut. That stunning hot pink cover and the out-there concept bely both the gravity of the social issues raised and the extreme and often violent lengths that some of the characters are prepared to go to in defence of their ideals. It’s a wholly original take on dystopian science fiction and a brilliant feat of imagination, which manages to be both accessible and intelligent. What’s more, it does it all without ever losing its heart, thanks to the utterly loveable Willa. Highly recommended.

LOVED this book - which is saying a lot because I'm not usually into futuristic dystopian sci-fi or plot-driven books but I couldn't put this book down. There's very little character development but the main character and supporting characters were different enough that it helped add to the story. It was fast-paced and did a great job on having a crazy twist at the end I totally wasn't expecting. Definite recommend!

Thank you Netgally and Angry Robot for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating 3.5/5

When I saw the premise of this book, my curiosity piqued so fast I requested it right away. A dystopian society where blood type is the reigning factor in how class divides work. The upper echelon being the universal donor of O, while the rest falls into middle, then even poorer classes. It's nothing I had read before.

Add in the bonus of a main character unlike any other. A pink haired grandmother who's knows older phlebotomy techniques. I was in love with her, and even the other characters throughout the book.

The pacing was quick, though about the last 30% was way to quick and I struggled just a bit keeping up with what was going on. The last 10% especially felt like it was happening in the blink of an eye, and with how abruptly it ended, I feel like it could have spanned a bit more pages or even a chapter. Even at this point the ending has me wondering if this will be a standalone, or if we might get more adventures of Willa and her new team.

There were also a few moments where it'd jump mid chapter without a small note of doing so. For example there would be talking, then suddenly Willa would be struggling to sleep. This could be fixed quickly with some indentations or added graphics for separation of moments.

Overall it was a great sci-fi romp. Specially for those who are fascinated with blood and phlebotomy. Plus it had a really interesting twist, that I didn't see coming about halfway through!

Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot Books for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

4+ stars. Well done book about the near future. In a post apocalyptic world, the main source of income is people donating their blood in exchange for money and food. Society is separated by blood type, which I thought was an interesting take on class divide. Willa Mae Wallace is a “reaper” who draws blood. She is one of the few who is actually trained as a phlebotomist before all of the wars. She figures out some questionable things and sets a lot of action in motion—I don’t want to give anything away. Willa is always driven to protect her grandson Isaiah, whom she is raising.

It is so refreshing that the main characters/heros are middle aged women!Willa’s grandson Isaiah is a bit flat. There are also some awesome inventions that I wouldn’t be surprised to see in real life down the road.

Excellent debut by Chris Panatier and I look forward to reading more by him in the future.

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and author Chris Panatier for providing me with an ARC of this novel.

This was one of the coolest concepts that I have come across in a long, long time. I definitely was getting some Hunger Games vibes throughout. This novel kept me guessing the entire way through and was full of plot twists that kept me on my feet. If you like anything dystopian, you should give this a read!

As a trained phlebotomist, I’m fully qualified to tell you that this book is bloody fun. Chris Panatier’s upcoming debut novel has satisfied a thirst I didn’t know I had for a dystopian-heist adventure.

The Phlebotomist is set in 2067 after a series of nuclear attacks have led to radiation poisoning and a slew of illnesses, particularly blood-related diseases. The government has been supplanted by Patriot, a private organisation who enforce a monthly blood tax in order to save the sick who live in the Grey Zones.

While the majority of jobs have been automated, Willa is one of the lucky few still employed, working as a phlebotomist and collecting the monthly blood tithe. With no other source of income most people are forced to sell additional units of their blood to Patriot, who set their buying price based on demand. This has given rise to a caste system where O-blood type citizens – highbloods – receive a generous premium for their in-demand juice, while people with the less desirable AB-blood type – lowbloods – are paid a pittance and live in relative poverty. Willa is AB-positive, but has saved up and moved to a B-positive neighbourhood with her grandson Isaiah.

Willa’s life is quickly turned upside down when she sees something she shouldn’t have, making her question her whole world. Harbouring new suspicions about Patriot, Willa is forced to cooperate with blood-hackers, criminals who profit from mislabelled units of blood, in order to keep Isaiah safe.

The Phlebotomist has been on my TBR ever since I first saw the stunning cover illustrated by the author himself. This book is as fun as it is surprising, with Panatier putting an interesting new twist on more than one genre mainstay. While the story can be read as scathing social and political commentary, I think Panatier mostly wants you to sit back and enjoy his bloody ride.  

Willa is a badass woman tackling the world head-on in her aubergine boots and candy-pink wig. She is a loveable character, tired of the world and at the same time ready to see it burn if it means giving her grandson a better chance at life. At 60-something years of age she’s not your typical lead for a spec fic dystopian novel, but I found her point of view refreshing and interesting, one that I would love to see more of in SFF. Willa and the tech-savvy, slightly unhinged Lock are absolutely my new favourite criminal duo.

With plenty of style, humour, action and a fantastic ending, I would absolutely love to see a screen adaption of The Phlebotomist. In the meantime, you can pre-order a copy of the book ahead of its release on 8th September.

Thank you to Angry Robot for providing an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, and congrats to Chris Panatier for an awesome debut.

The gist: Welcome to a dystopia that is going to get your blood pumping (sorry).

In my defence, there is a lot of blood involved in this dark, super-fun dystopian romp.

Is it wrong to have fun in your dystopia? I like to think not. And it’s hard not to have fun when you’re fighting the system with the likes of Panatier’s brilliant characters.

It’s an original take on the corporate Big Brother vibes, and Panatier’s characters are some of the coolest to be around. I hadn’t realised until I read this book how much I needed to see an older woman kick some ass, and Panatier gives us a grandma who is going to go as far as it takes to protect her grandson (spoiler alert: quite far). And she gets some mighty fine friends to do it with too (who doesn’t want to be friends with gun-toting hackers and killer kids?).

The Phlebotomist is a pacy book with enough action to give you a workout, but with enough heart to keep you wanting more.

I’m not going to say too much because I don’t trust myself not to give away some of the surprises.

And there are surprises… bloody surprises.

This likely ain’t the dystopia you think it is.

Mwa-ha-ha-ha.

*Ahem*

PS bonus points awarded for the brightest cover in the history of books. Get your shades ready.

Favourite line: “You already said fuck earlier”

Read if: You want to hang with the coolest grandma in town. Bring your own wig.

Read with: A nice glass of the reddest of bloods. I mean wines, WINES. If you’re the sort that faints at the sight of blood you might wanna have some cushions handy.

Will post to www.thedustlounge.com closer to publication date

In truth, more of a 3.5 /5. I definitely enjoyed reading this novel, but it didn’t blow me away. While there are many variations of classism/segregation in sci-fi novels, this was one I hadn’t read before. Segregating people by blood type was a fascinating premise, as blood type is something I rarely think about. The logistics of the Harvest was fairly believable, as was the eventual reason for it that we find out about a quarter of the way in. While I wasn’t super keen on the twist itself, the story is an exciting, entertaining thriller.

The book really shines with the two main characters: Willa, the rather naive and complacent grandmother, and Lock, an ex-marine hacker with a big gun. The two have a fun dynamic that plays one off of the other and it was wonderful to see a novel in this genre feature not only one old lady protagonist but two. Willa is too hesitant and Lock is too rash, which create interesting scenarios. Neither really grow too much as people, but they are quite fun. There is another character, Everard, who gets a perspective, but as it’s only a few chapters, we don’t learn nearly enough about him, despite hints that he has an interesting backstory.

Unfortunately, there is a tonal shift from the first half to second that takes the story from serious sci-fi to rather campy. While it was still fun, I enjoyed the more subtly menacing tone of the first bit more than the action-adventure narrative of the second half. It felt like the novel was trying to “say something” in the first half but in the second half this message (about classism presumably) dissolves and it becomes simply an adventure.

It’s a fun ride with a pair of protagonists we’re not used to seeing, in a novel which morphs from one genre to another in a twist I’m surprised I didn’t expect!

This blew me away!
So, here we have a book that purports to be a dystopia novel, and in the beginning, it rocks ALL of those characteristics. A totalitarian, autocratic government that has seized complete power due to a nuclear war - meaning that the common people must donate, and receive blood to survive. Society has degenerated into blood type social strata. If you have a blood type that can be safely given to other blood types, you are higher class,and so on and so forth.
So it looks a lot like a regular dystopian novel, (and it's jolly good, too, excellent reading) and then BAM! MAJOR PLOT TWIST! I read hundreds of books per year. I always see the plot twists, I always work out whodunit... And I didn't see this one coming! It made the novel into a genre blending masterpiece. I don't want to spoil the plot twist, but man, I was blown away by it. Incredibly skillfully written,
I also loved that the main characters were black, the main protagonist is Old, and that there was miniscule romantic subplots, (and what the tiniest, literally one sentence subplot it was, was queer) I really recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in post apocalyptic, dystopian fiction, Atwood fans, etc.

Please note this is a 3.5

This book was a great example of a fantastic set-up, and first half. It didn't pull any stops, building a post-apocalyptic nightmare world that I had no idea as to twist until it hit me full force in the face. Now, THAT was a surprise- and specifically to suddenly have myself gifted with a horror novel. The first half with the caste system, the drones, the blood collection, and the characters was absolutely riveting. However, the second half is where this book lost me.

It was as though it devolved into a generic thriller with no real meaning left in it, and the whole of the story was just lost to the ending. The idea of an epic collection of people fighting the big baddies was sweet, but there are so many other roads it could have gone down, and I think it would've benefitted from perhaps something like the taking down of the system from the inside. I wanted this book to be so much more, and it was deeply lacking in that respect. The characterisation slid downhill too, and I almost felt like I was reading a totally different book.

However, the first half, with its fascinating set-up and the absolute backhand of a twist it provided made for a really interesting start to the book. There was so much potential here, I just wished it went a little further with the story and it ended up somewhere a little less stereotypical.

‘The Phlebotomist’ is part medical sci-fi, part dystopia, and part fantasy novel. It’s audacious in scope and full of brilliant ideas, but they don’t always work cohesively together. The twist in the middle was shocking and completely unexpected, but the sudden tone and genre change didn’t work for me in the way I wanted it to.

Before reviewing this, I feel like I should give a disclaimer – I have a medical background. I’m always going to be pickier with medical sci-fi than any other genre, because I’m familiar with the theory behind it. It’s clear from the first page that Chris Panatier has done his research, with everything he includes more-or-less grounded in science, and I’m very impressed with the whole idea of a society segregated by blood type. There are a couple of inaccuracies (for example a reference to an O antigen, which doesn’t exist), but overall Panatier does a great job at incorporating medical science facts as springboards for science fiction.

The story focuses on Willa Mae Wallace – a Reaper for Patriot, the blood contractor that more or less rules society. The world has been ravaged by nuclear weapons, producing Grey Zones – areas full of people suffering from radiation sickness and other injuries who desperately need blood. With jobs mostly performed by robots, the main way for the populace to earn money is by donating blood – with the best price gained for O negative blood, which can be donated to anyone. Those with O negative have become rich, whilst those with AB positive live in slums, as their blood can only be donated to each other. Willa is AB positive, and has only dragged herself out of the slums by gaining her job as a Reaper (or phlebotomist). However, after witnessing an accident at work, Willa finds herself privy to Patriot’s biggest secret – and they’ll do anything to keep it from getting out.

Willa is an intriguing character. For one thing, she’s a grandmother – an unusual choice for a sci-fi protagonist – who’s been left completely bald, choosing to wear a wig of bright pink hair. Everything she does is to protect her grandson Isaiah. She’s got strong morals and a kind streak a mile wide, but – whilst she regularly reminisced about the past – she doesn’t always read her age. She’s an active lady with no age-related complaints, and I wish a little more had been done to make her seem like an older lady – or else she’d just been written as Isaiah’s mother.

While Willa is the majority point-of-view character, we get occasional chapters from the perspective of Everard, the member of a group of blood-hackers. These are interesting but mostly unnecessary – they never do anything to further the plot. They also do nothing to flesh out Everard as a character – while Willa gets some backstory, most of the other characters are little more than names on the page. This makes it hard to care when bad things happen to them, and lowers the stakes in what should be tense, dramatic moments.

My main issue with this book is more of a personal one than any flaw with the book itself, and that’s that it turned into something very different to what I expected. I went in expecting sci-fi dystopia, but by the end this was more of a fantasy novel with a sci-fi backdrop. I love fantasy, but I see so little medical sci-fi that I just really wanted a novel that explored the potential of that, rather than falling back on fantasy to add intrigue. My rating is purely based on personal enjoyment, and I really think that many others will love the direction it takes. I would prefer this as two separate books – one sci-fi dystopia, and one with the intriguing fantasy elements.

The ending feels a bit rushed in places – so much happens in a short space of time that it stops being as dramatic as it should be – but sets the book up for a potential sequel. Given that I’ll know what to expect, I might pick up a sequel if it appears – the world is excellent, and I’d be interested to see if Panatier explores beyond the boundaries of what we see here.

Overall, this is an ambitious book that didn’t quite work for me, but that I expect many people will love. If you’re a fan of genre-crossing sci-fi and fantasy, kickass grandmothers, and taking down evil corporations, this might be a book for you.

"Doom is a flood that waits for the rift."

First of all, can we please just admire the cover of this book? It jumped off the screen at me and I knew I had to request it. Second of all, the premise. This book is completely different from any other dystopian novel I have read. The book follows Willa, who works as a phlebotomist for the government. Citizens are required to donate blood by law, and are paid for any extra blood they can give. Willa is the primary guardian for her grandson, Isiah, after her own daughter's life was taken by the blood trade. Third of all, Willa.. A grandmother as the lead was totally different in a genre where most protagonists are young and healthy.

The world building in this novel was exceptional. The blood districts, the harvest and the heart were all so well developed, without excessive info-dumping. I loved Willa's character and her commitment to Isiah, and I especially loved her newfound friendship with Lock. Their personalities were very different, and yet they were both motherly and determined. Kathy was the ultimate surprise and I kept forgetting she was only fourteen.

The beginning of the book and the last few chapters were fast paced and exciting. I loved the ending and hope there will be a second book. However, some of the lengthy medical descriptions and computer terminology from Lock were over my head, and I found myself skimming these sections. I greatly admire the research that went into this book, but for me, it didn't need to be quite so detailed.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.