Title: Blood Challenge
Author: Eileen Wilks
Series: World of the Lupi #7
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Animagus, Paranormal romance, Urban fantasy
Dates read: 1st – 22nd January 2021
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Year: 2011
5th sentence, 74th page: I usually don’t, but patterning’s potentially a -“

Lily Yu and Rule Turner’s engagement announcement is stirring up ugly passions in the Humans First camp. There’s hate mail. Death threats. Lily’s car is vandalized.

But professionally, things are running smoothly… until a lupus in Tennessee goes on a killing spree. Then Rule’s brother, Benedict, catches a lovely intruder – twice. The first time, she’s sneaking around the home of the leader of Humans First. The second time, she’s sneaking around Nokolai Clanhome.

It may not be possible to deal with the rapidly escalating situation the way Lily always has: through the law. Especially when she’s pulled off the case due to an alleged conflict of interest. Lily’s loyalties will be stretched to the breaking point when she discovers that the deaths in Tennessee were only the opening skirmish in an all-our war.

I had this on my TBR pile late last year. There is something about the World of the Lupi books that are brilliant, and always make me want to reach out for them. Plus, I read Human Error just before Christmas, which gave me that yearning yet again. It did take longer to get through than many of the other books of this size tend to do… but it was still thoroughly, beautifully enjoyable. I just tend to forget that these books are long, complex and filled with small writing.

The fact that Benedict gets a second chosen was kind of given away in Human Error, so that pleasant surprise was very quickly taken away from me. But, getting to know Arjenie a bit better as the insanity of this storyline unfolded was brilliant and fun. Particularly when the “getting to know” was taking place alongside all of the insanity of a very complex plot that just seems to keep getting more and more complex. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t just breeze through these books, but become completely absorbed in them. They’re beautifully, wonderfully intricate and, often, confusing!

The major conspiracies and backstory in this series has slowly been ramping up. And now, getting to the 7^th book in the series, it is getting seriously, ridiculously intense. The characters are still brilliant, and the emotions that you feel alongside them are wonderful. But there is so much more going on with the battle that the lupi face now. It meant that once I got about a quarter of the way into this book, I was sunk. And couldn’t stop reaching for it, even when I needed to be productive.

I loved this book. And now I need to wait until I’ve finished a few books before sinking my teeth into Death Magic. Now that the plot is thickening with the characters and conspiracies throughout this story, I can’t wait to see what insane shenanigans are going to happen next. Plus, Cynna has had her baby, Benedict also has a chosen, and everyone is just thoroughly loveable and impossible to forget…

<- Blood Magic

Death Magic ->

Image source: Goodreads