Bloodlust: The Blood Trilogy #1

by Jaxen Kennedy, Oliver Owen Grey

Welcome to Obscura Academy, the only post-secondary institution in North America to educate and certify Ethers to live and work in human Society. Our student body is vast; we are home to werewolves, vampires, celestials, fae, and many more species, committing to the promise of unity in a shared world.

Kylo is a carefree werewolf who appreciates raging music, a strong blunt, and a good party. It’s at an end-of-term celebration where he first meets the dark and mysterious Lathan, and is introduced to the dangerously addictive highs that come with a vampire’s venom.

Lathan lives in solitude on campus year-round, but over the summer he can’t stop thinking about the taste of the werewolf’s blood from the party. When an influx of new students puts him and the bubbly wolf as roommates, it becomes harder to resist him—in more ways than just one.

The Obscura Saga is a series of interconnected romances set in the same urban fantasy world. It is recommended to read in the order of publication, but not necessary unless books are part of their own series; Bloodlust is the first in its own trilogy, as well as the first in the overall saga.

Genres: Vampires, M M Romance, Queer, Paranormal, Gay, Shapeshifters, Romance

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 20, 2024

About the author

The prairies aren’t the most riveting setting to live, so disabled Canadian writer and editor Jaxen Kennedy is forced to create more interesting worlds or suffer their melancholy reality. Taking inspiration primarily from videos games, their adoration of monsters started very young, right behind those creaky Resident Evil doors. Jaxen has edited for literary journals, both in print and online, and enjoys the editorial process as much as writing—and accepts that this is just another thing that makes them anomalous. When not writing, they’re thinking about writing, which is still writing, they were told once…by a writer.

Reviews

[Jaxen Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hi, all! Oliver and I are beyond excited to share the first installment in The Obscura Saga with you! Please be mindful of the warnings below, also found in the front of the book:

CONTENT WARNINGS: blood, explicit sexual content, graphic violence & death, mental distress & anxiety, sexual assault, substance abuse, parental abuse/neglect, disordered eating, self-harm.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like vampires, werewolves, queer romance, deep/dark themes, and spice, then Bloodlust is perfect for you!

Bloodlust is a good character-driven paranormal romance. It's a fast-paced book where the spice happens early on. The cast of characters feel like real people and you really get to know the characters' thoughts, motives, and internal struggles. You can really imagine meeting them in real life except that they also just happen to be paranormal creatures.

I'll admit that I'm not a romance reader. I mostly read fantasy, usually high fantasy, danmei, and sci-fi books. That being said, I found that Bloodlust kept me engaged and motivated me to keep reading. I did, at one point, found myself going "Okay, now what? What comes next?" but because the story is fast-paced, the plot never dragged or felt boring. The plot tackles the real struggles of falling in love, being in university, and facing past and present traumas.

All in all, this is a very promising debut from authors that I can tell have a clear passion and vision for this world and the characters that they have crafted. I'm excited to see how this trilogy and the entire saga as a whole progresses.

[Dryelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a roller-coaster and a pleasant surprise, I was liking the light start, but then the romantic plot thickened a lot and got me shedding some tears.

I really love the relationship Lathan and Kylo built, it's fast, but intense and it makes sense within who they are.

I do have a few things I don't love so much. I think the writers are good in showing emotions and contextualizing the mental state, actions and reactions of the characters, which is why to me there's no need to overexplain so much the emotions like they do after they already showed, you feel it and understand with them, and then you still get the explanation and then their inner thought that summs up, it's like they don't trust readers to understand their characters, but they are well-written so it shouldn't be a concern. It's fine for more complex occasions, in key points, but I think it might be overused.

And on another side I wished there was more world building in this, cause some plot devices are too jarring to take characters to one point to another, but they don't make sense. The Obscura Academy, and how society organizes for it to be needed could be a bit more explored, just to enrich and contextualize some of the things that happen there. I understand that the focus is on Lathan and Kylo, but we still need to understand more where they are and why and how it works. It's the Obscura saga, it opens with a setting to the Obscura Academy, but we don't really know anything else later beyond the fact they seem to randomly neglect their students in life threatening ways without consequences or reasoning.

On a side note, I'm Brazilian and even though I don't share Kylo's origin exactly, as a Latina it was a delight how Maria and the entire family was represented, big bro too was amazing, I loved them!

I also loved the way the intimate scenes were written, the shift between their dynamics according to what they needed from each other and what it represented, the love for each other when they are showed to be very different like in the full vampire form or the werewolf one. It was lovely.

I'll definitely be reading the rest of the saga!

[Dreamcatcher]

DNF @ 61%