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Vincent Bernard

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Vincent Bernard rated a book it was ok

Blood Slaves (The Blood Saga #1)

by Markus Redmond (Goodreads Author)

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Vincent Bernard said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

" I’m struggling with this novel. I want badly to love it, but there are glaring problems. First of all, the novel needed another atomic edit. A huge over all to take out songs of the clunky dialogue and to get the mythology in order. The novel struggl I’m struggling with this novel. I want badly to love it, but there are glaring problems. First of all, the novel needed another atomic edit. A huge over all to take out songs of the clunky dialogue and to get the mythology in order. The novel struggled in finding its footing. The slave C aspects over powered the vampire mythology, often getting lost. I had to remind myself it’s a vampire novel and not just a slave novel.

2. This novel is super INTENSE. And I mean intense to the point where I had to put it down because it began reading like torture porn. For a book written by a Blavk author about American history there almost seemed no kind of grave given to the enslaved population. As a reader you age to endure pages upon pages of some of the most inhumane acts perpetrated to a Black population before any kind of justice or revenge is given. I got to the point where I asked “okay, when are thy going to change? When are are we going to read about any justice being done? It’s more pages of gruesome violence against another enslaved person. It’s challenging. You keep reading hoping for it but in the end, the revenge scenes weren’t enough to justify the trauma the reader is asked to endure.

3. The white characters in the book come off a cartoonish t best. These read like these cardboard, flat, uninspired villains that were so purposely evil none of them had any kind of three dimensionality. It’s like “okay, all the whit wool are just evil, all the enslaved are just slaves and nothing more. White pp in this Locke do things that make you roll your eyes because it’s so badly written. As I said, it needed st least two more edits.

It was a hugely missed opportunity to come up with something unique but the writer dropped the ball and created something with prose that intimately falls flat.

I won’t be reading the rest of the series and I wouldn’t recommend this to another Black person unless you enjoy reading about Black ppl being dehumanized with very little pay off in my opinion. .

On more pet peeve in this novel, the fact that he kept referring to the Black ENSLAVED population as “slaves.” So, he would write something like “Tussy, a round and rotund slave who …” or “a groups of slave children played around the first. Gertie, a slave who just…” I kept reading and replacing the word. It’s like he was allergic to calling the Black ppl in the novel anything else but slave. You couldn’t jsut write “a group of children played by the fire” or “Gertie was a round woman who…”

I had to say this. ...more "

Jun 01, 2026 08:42AM · see review