Bookish Brews Snapshot
The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le
When Nhika is caught using her bloodcarving abilities during a sham medical appointment, she's captured by underground thugs and sold to an aristocratic family to heal the last witness of their father’s murder.
🌎 Southeast Asian Rep ✒️ Debut Author ❤️🩹 Trauma and Healing 📖 Couldn't Put It Down
- Genre: Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult
Book Review
Comforting, ambitious, political, smart, sincere, honest
What is it like when an integral piece of who you are becomes outlawed? With knowledge passed down from her grandmother and her grandmother before that, Nhika is the only one left to carry on the knowledge of her people. In secret, she is forced to practice her bloodcarving abilities, using it to heal people for just enough money to survive. But when a sham medical appointment gets her caught by underground thugs and then bought by an aristocratic family, Nhika is given the chance to learn the knowledge that was stolen from her and her people.
One thing that fantasy as a genre is lacking much of is explicitly diaspora main characters. It’s so strange to me how many people I know who yearn for a place that is no longer theirs and yet I see it so rarely in fantasy. But I feel a special kind of kinship to Nhika for the things that she has been cut off from. The way that she is desperate to learn more about herself and her heritage is a specific kind of solemnity that I know very dearly, and her apprehension to trust anyone in a world that always sees her as the other makes me homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist.
I’m especially fond of how this book highlights two entirely different diaspora experiences in one story. Nhika and Kochin come from the same place but have vastly different experiences and understandings of themselves and their relationship to home, and I think it’s beautiful how Le is able to emphasize how each of them came to their own conclusions. With so few explicitly diaspora stories in second world fantasy stories, it’s refreshing to be so blatantly clear that the diaspora experience is not a linear one and everyone has a different experience. The diaspora experience is not a monolith.
On a smaller note, I really appreciated the emphasis on how propagandized language is used. It parallels the way that states use specific language to encourage the masses to draw conclusions on different peoples. It’s a subtle violence that can radicalize people without them even realizing it and I love the call out here. Nhika is known as a bloodcarver, a name that instills fear because of what she can do to the inside of people’s bodies. But her people, who can no longer speak for themselves, called people like her a heartsoothe, because their purpose is to heal. The difference between the two is so stark, and such a strong example of how language can change the opinions of the masses.
I thoroughly appreciate all the ways that diaspora experience shows up in this story, especially for a second world fantasy. It’s honest and sincere in the details that remind you that the author understands. It’s in the details, in the comments, in the insecurities, in the yearning. This story is told through a lens of diaspora, and in the same way that Nhika finds home in her magic and knowledge, to me, The Last Bloodcarver feels like a glimpse of home.
