Review: Hidden Blade

Queen of torment creates another stunning new series.  #mustread #bookreview #urbanfantasy @pippadacosta

Hidden Blade by Pippa DaCosta
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Buy this book now. A shocking and stunning new series, Hidden Blade will cut deep. Queen of torment, Ms. DeCosta creates another world where the lead character is totally screwed over. Starting with page one, I am hooked and can't stop until I get to the end. This story moved fast and kept my adrenaline pumping.

I loved Ace Dante. He is the antihero who is really a hero but given a raw deal. What happens when the good guy is the loser and the evil guy is the winner? Enter in Ace Dante who is betrayed by his mother and cursed by an evil god. Specifically, two psychotic dysfunctional incestual Egyptian gods who need to be wiped off the face of this Earth and every realm above and below, continue to mess with Ace. I loathe them.

This story engaged me, infuriated me and made me cry. I rail at Ms. DeCosta for moving me so much I cried at the end of this story. If you need a happily ever after ending, this book is not for you. If you want to feel intense sorrow, grief, fury and helplessness, this is the book for you. If Ms. DeCosta were to ever to delve into BDSM, look out, she would blow a kinky reader's mind.

The world building is fantastic. Ms. DeCosta takes the Egyptian mythos and mixes it into something new and refreshing. Her character building is amazing. She creates individual characters who are unique and pull a reader in. A reader becomes invested in the character and with Ace, it isn't that I feel pity. It is that I feel outraged and I root for him to overcome. He does not. He is beaten down even more in this story. Ms. DeCosta is one of those authors who will kill characters off. I gasped in horror with what she did. I couldn't believe my eyes and had to re-read several passages over again to ensure what happened really did happen.

The tale is vivid with imagery and almost a sensory overload. This type of gritty world with dark themes and antiheroes is hard to write well. Ms. DeCosta does it so well without making it heartless. Instead, she tears the reader's heart out and stomps all over it whilst chortling maniacally. This story is smooth, suspenseful, slightly dirty erotic and powerful. At the end of this story, I hit rock bottom hard and ended up with a major book hang over. I loved reading this book and I'm a bit afraid to re-read it because of the intensity of emotions pulled out of me. This mesmerizing urban fantasy is highly recommended to readers who enjoy a tortured hero used as a proverbial whipping boy.

*provided by NetGalley