This was a terrific debut Novel. Kaylan, was living her life in relative happiness, she loved her job as a blacksmith and was happiest supporting her family and spending time with her best friend. This all changed when she was called to be the Shadow of Lord Rennert. This position involved being tied to a magical item that painfully and slowly killed her. Kaylan becomes increasingly unhappy with the state of the territory she lives and, and when she uncovers a rebel plot, she slowly becomes involved.

Relic was highly recommended to me by a fellow book blogger and I am very grateful! Relic was exactly my style and I’m very glad it will be a series!

I took me an embarrassing amount of time to get around to this one and I apologize!

I love a long book, but sometimes it's just too long for the content inside and this one was the case. Kaylan made a lot of decisions trying to protect everyone that she loved and I appreciated that, however, there were lots of times I felt she was wishy washy with the decision instead of just making it and believing in it.

The world was new and neat (in a dark messed up way) and was fun to learn. There was no information dumping which is always a plus.

I know that this is a reader problem and not a book problem as I didn't connect as I wanted to. The indecisiveness really bothered me as she has 500 pages to be more confident in herself. It also took a really long time into the book in order to get to some real action.

Either way I think others would enjoy, unfortunately it wasn't a LOVE for me

I know a lot of my friends liked this book, so I requested it, but it got archived before I could read it. I finally read it a bit ago and it wasn't really my favorite. It didn't have that special something that differentiated it from all the other books I read. This book has a lot of promise, and I'm sure many others will enjoy it more than I did.

This book sounded so up my street but unfortunately for me the story just fell flat. There seemed to be too many plot holes there were times it just wasn’t well thought out . It also seemed very light to me on world-building and we don’t learn much more from the characters point of view and nothing in the story really stood out or seemed inspiring or interesting, sadly not one for me.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

This story seemd to take a while to get going but was worth the wait. Kaylan must serve as a shadow, meaning death as the relic will slowly poison her and all who are close to it, whilst plot is uncovered to overthrow the ruling powers. The world building is on point and the story is decently emotional! Looking forward to the next book. Will definatly be interested to see where we go from here!!

Relic was just not for me. I didn't really care much for any of the characters, I just couldn't get invested in them, they all felt one-dimensional and I struggled to keep engaged with this, and it took me longer to finish than expected.

I really liked the premise of the story but it fell short for me, I think if the plot had been more fleshed out and more detailed I would have enjoyed it more. I feel like this could have been so great but there were too many things that wasn't clear or well developed.

Character knew things about the main character when they had never met and this was never explained, I feel like there was a whole part around the Relic and its magic that wasn't explained and this just left me wanting to know more. I'm guessing this might be covered throughout the rest of the series, but I fell like it would have kept me hooked If I understood more about the magic system and the politics.

I also found this too slow paced, when I'm reading YA I prefer for things to be more action, I found in Relic that we just followed the main character around and saw her do a whole lot of nothing.

On a plus the world felt well developed, I could picture the streets and bars well. The cover is really nice too although its an obvious spoiler to what's going to happen at the end of the book.

I Kept reading this book because it was captivating and at the same time I wanted to know if something will happen. The magic system is had to get since it wasn't explained. The concept of bein a shadow is not new to me since I have read it on another book...but The whole relic idea is new and enjoyable. I didn't understand the characters motives at all.

Thanks to BooksGoSocial and Bronwyn Eley for an advanced readers copy of this book.

3.5 stars

It was hard for me to get past the random lack of capitalization in this book. I understand it's an ARC, but FFS. i really found it frustrating that sometimes i would find a sentence that was capitalized at the beginning, but a lot of the time i would not. Did you write this on your phone? Phew, rant over.

Anyhoodle,

Decent enough read, if grim. The author has no issues killing her darlings. It felt like a bunch of nothing happened until the end, and then it all happened in a flurry and ended in a cliffhanger. I felt that the deaths were gratuitous and all to make us hate one person who has pretty weak motivation to behave in such a manner. It's hard to get into it when the motivation for the bad guy isn't super believable. It's pretty much just evil for the sake of evil. There is romance, but it is sparse and doesn't come to any kind of satisfying conclusion, but there're still 2 more books coming. I did mostly enjoy reading this book, but it was the kind of reading where I was mostly spurred on waiting for something that never came, and I just became progressively more frustrated.

Kaylan makes few, if any, true connections with any of the other characters. She is pretty much just miserable and stupid throughout. The scenery stays grey and drab. The magic system is scant and never explained. Few characters have any redeeming qualities. I suppose that makes them multifaceted, but it also makes them difficult to sympathize with or GAF about. Would I read the next one? If I got it for free maybe, but I imagine I will have probably forgotten this book by the time that rolls around.

This book was such a surprise for me!

I found myself enthralled in the writing style and how smart plot points had been thought out. While there are some common tropes within the story, I wasn't discouraged at all by them because of how the plot points had been covered. I found myself grinning every time I picked up the book, because the characters were so interesting and fascinating to read that this 500 page book just flew by.

AND THE ENDING. OOF.

Basically now I have to go out and somehow find the next two books somewhere, because I need to read them asap.

Thank you to Netgalley and publishers for providing me with a free e-copy in return for an honest review.

Relic is a very interesting read. It follows Kalyan through the streets of the Slip into the castle. This is a dystopian, coming of age story. It’s full of intrigue and unanswered questions. If you enjoy stories like the Hunger Games and Graceling, you should give this story a try.

In this story, a relic is a magical stone that protects a Lord and his bloodline, but it slowly kills anyone else around it. Lord Rennard has a specific way of handling this problem: Shadows. A person is chosen to be his personal servant and slowly dies from the effects of the relic. The idea is that this servant will do anything that needs to be done in Lord Rennard’s presence to save everyone else from the effects of the relic. This book follows the story of Kaylan, who is the newest Shadow. She is forced to leave behind her family and her life as a blacksmith for certain death.

I had a hard time getting started with this book. There are a lot of characters introduced early on, which was a bit overwhelming. Once I got into the story though, I understood why the character focused opening was important. The glimpse of Kaylan’s life before she becomes the Shadow helps the reader understand her thoughts and feelings as the book progresses.

Kaylan is a wonderfully complex character. She starts out the book as a strong blacksmith, but she has to face her own weakness as the relic eats away at her mind and body. I loved the way Bronwyn Eley used a fantasy story to dig into what it is like when your mind betrays you. I was brought to tears multiple times throughout the book, because I could truly feel and relate to the struggles Kaylan was facing.

This book is the first in a trilogy. Eley has done a good job introducing some big questions in this book, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy to get some answers.

Relic
By Bronwyn Eley
A new aspect of fantasy this book looks into our impression or ideal of history. Every thing can be seen within shades of grey. The idea that we don't always see the world as it really is.

This was awesome! I absolutely loved it! The story was so good, I couldn't put it down! Kaylin is an awesome character. A female blacksmith who has to take the place of the shadow, the one who does the ruler's dirty work. She's not happy about the situation but she can't escape it.
This story has magic, a quest for a relic that could save her and lots of action. I thoroughly loved this book and I can't wait to continue on with the series.

Relic was just not for me. I could not connect to the character, who to me, seemed very one-dimensional and unlikable, the other characters were equally as flat. There was no lure when I started reading it, nothing that kept me engage and wanting to know more, just lots of word telling, and I feel like the plot has been done, and therefore there was nothing that really sparked interest for me during the story.

The cover design is gorgeous though!

There are lots of good reviews for this book, this was just not, for myself, an enjoyable read, and I will not be continuing the series.

As someone who enjoys fast paced books I was honestly a little disappointed. Most of the events in the synopsis took about 40% of the book to actually happen. The world building also felt pretty limited and I got really confused at times.

The main character is easy to empathize with, however I didn’t see as much of the side characters. Her situation is one that makes her easier to love and for that reason, I still enjoyed this book.

If you enjoy really fast paced novels, then this probably isn’t the book for you but if you enjoy more character based, person stories then you will likely enjoy this story a lot more than I did.

I was hyped to get a free copy of the Relic from NetGalley. I kept seeing people post photos of the cover on the media so I was really eager to get my hands on it. But, I did not love it or was obsessed with honestly.
It is a great and interesting read with some ups and downs. The plot focused on the magic of the lord and how it affects the protagonist, Kaylan. The magic, so-called relic, was a different type of magic than I am used to reading about. I mean, the lord is flourishing while everyone around him is slowly dying? I never heard about anything similar! I wanted to learn more about the relic. There was a lack of background for the magic. As well as some description for the characters. Don't get me wrong, the author did a good job helping me visualise the character which I 'met' but at one point I just got lost. There were so many characters, which were mentioned only in the beginning or middle that I just couldn't keep with it. It could be my fault for getting distracted I guess?

My favourite character was Markus. I loved the way he was presented. I did like him from the first chapters he was mentioned in. His relationship with Kaylan? Can I have something similar, please?!

Kaylan. Hm. I have mixed feeling about her persona. Yes, she is an amazingly strong protagonist who despite her dying, still fought the war between herself and the relic. She was always there for her friends, helping or saving them. I did not like that she kept who she was from Markus for so long. Plus, it was strange that he did not found out sooner that she was the new Shadow. He found out secret information about Kaylan's friend in the prison but no one told him who she was? Seems a bit weird.

Overall, the world-building is great. I really enjoyed the way the story is written. Despite being quite a long book, it was easy to read which is always a big plus. I'd say, a new reader needs to give it a go and see for themselves. And of course, the good news is that there are 2 more books in the series!

I did leave a review on Goodreads, Amazon and I will post a post on Instagram tomorrow, tagging the author. I cannot provide the link for the Amazon because I am not sure how to show only my review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Four Stars
The star of the show here was defiantly the characters. I’m not going to spend to long elaborating, so here’s a few bullet points:
- Plot was SLOW, SLOW moving. At least at the beginning—it just takes a while to get into the action, but then it’s pretty darn good
- The world building was cool, but I’m selfish and I wanted to know more!!!
- The romance...Bronwyn Eley, you are an evil person to leave us with such an ending! Ahhh, I’m being tortured! I need morrrreee
- Would I read it again? Mhm, I liked it but it wasn’t good enough to warrant a reread. And if I did, I would need to do some serious skimming.
- Would I read any sequels? Yeah, I think so. Do I have a choice though when the book ended like it did? No. I’m too curious for my own good

With thanks to BooksGoSocial and Bronwyn Eley for an advanced readers copy of this book.

I went into this one pretty blind and was blown away! What a brilliant debut.

This is a very character driven fantasy with, minimal world building, and at times a slower plot pace. You can really feel a lot of build up that I hope to see in the sequels. But this instalment is very much lead by the MC, Kaylen is an easy character to like, her bad luck and her being chosen as a shadow helps the reader to instantly route for her. She is a reluctant heroine, who although tries to push everyone away can't help but pull characters closer to her. Secondary characters, and friends, Jesper and Markus help to flesh out the plot and keep the pages turning.

I'm looking forward to reading the next books, as I'd like to see what this author can offer when it comes to action. If her plots are as good as her characters I'm sure we'll all be in safe hands.

A compelling story with a lot of mystery! Who is Bellamy ?!

I really enjoyed the story, the more it developed the more intrigued I got.

Although I suffered a lot with the protagonist, I deserved more love! He deserved more romantic scenes and much more after that end!