*FOUR starred reviews*
"Le skillfully brings to life a gritty world filled with a beautifully crafted cast and an intricate magic system I've never seen before. A smart, lush, and utterly compelling read." — Marie Lu, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Legend
"Brilliantly rendered. The Last Bloodcarver unfolds in gripping detail, following a mystery colored by its beautiful, destructive city. You’ll gasp, you’ll scream, you’ll cry, and you’ll be begging for the next book." — Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of These Violent Delights
"The Last Bloodcarver is the perfect blend of sci-fi, fantasy, and romance, with a world that feels lived in and characters that come alive on the page. A unique and beautifully written novel—Le is a talent to watch!" — Axie Oh, New York Times-bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
"The Last Bloodcarver has it all—a wonderfully unique magic system, heartfelt themes of legacy and diaspora, and obsession-worthy characters. I need more Nhika and Kochin now!" — Joan He, New York Times-bestselling author of The Ones We're Meant to Find
"Absolutely captivating. In The Last Bloodcarver, Le crafts a richly imagined fantasy world, filled with complex, nuanced characters and a magic system that feels brand new. This is one to be savored." — Grace D. Li, New York Times-bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief
"The Last Bloodcarver is fantasy for the vicious, bloody and unrepentant, but fear not: in Nhika’s journey, Le has crafted a story that is, in its heart, about her tender homecoming." — Em X. Liu, author of The Death I Gave Him
★ "An entrancingly well-written debut." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ "Le expertly crafts a Vietnamese-inspired dark fantasy debut via visceral and exquisitely rendered prose, intertwining a murder investigation with themes of unresolved grief, medical ethics, and lost heritage." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ "Medically based magic, a world full of mechanistic creations, and incredibly lovable side characters are icing on the cake of this slow burn, deeply romantic, and darkly biological fantasy with a Vietnamese foundation...An engrossing, emotionally intense debut." — Booklist, starred review
★ "All collections will benefit from this unequivocal first purchase that will resonate especially deeply with immigrant and diasporic teens struggling to see themselves in media." — School Library Journal, starred review
An Amazon Best Book of the Year
Nerd Daily Most-Anticipated YA
★ 2023-12-16
Nhika has been called many terrible things throughout her short life, but she knows herself to be a heartsooth.
Heartsooths can read and manipulate a person’s body and blood with a mere touch of skin on skin. But in the technocratic city-state of Theumas, she’s feared and reviled as a monstrous bloodcarver. After Nhika’s captured by Butchers and sold to Mimi, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, she’s set a seemingly impossible task—to heal the barely surviving witness to Mimi’s father’s recent untimely death. Nhika finally begins to hope she might be accepted and that she can use her gift as it was intended, laying some of the ghosts of her past to rest. But a chance meeting with Kochin, a mysterious boy who knows more than he should, soon spirals into a tangled web of intrigue and evil beyond her imagining. Nhika faces an impossible choice: whether to “help the first family to trust her, or follow the last person in the city who might truly understand her.” Le writes with meticulous care. The richly detailed worldbuilding is infused with Vietnamese cultural elements, and the characters, viewed through Nhika’s jaded yet desperately hopeful eyes, are sympathetic and complex, expressing conflicting emotions and motivations. The story demands, in the best possible ways, that readers think, posing questions of identity, family, and trust for them to ponder. The insidiously twisty ending packs a punch, leaving an opening for a sequel.
An entrancingly well-written debut. (map) (Fantasy. 12-18)