Title Blood Debts Series --- Author Terry J. Benton-Walker Cover Art Khadijah Khatib Publisher Tor Teen - 2023 First Printing Tor Teen - 2023 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Clement and Cristina Trudeau, Valentina Savant Main Elements Wizards

Thirty years ago, a young woman was murdered, a family was lynched, and New Orleans saw the greatest magical massacre in its history. In the days that followed, a throne was stolen from a queen.

On the anniversary of these brutal events, Clement and Cristina Trudeau—the sixteen-year-old twin heirs to the powerful, magical, dethroned family—are mourning their father and caring for their sick mother. Until, by chance, they discover their mother isn’t sick—she’s cursed. Cursed by someone on the very magic council their family used to rule. Someone who will come for them next.

Cristina, once a talented and dedicated practitioner of Generational magic, has given up magic for good. An ancient spell is what killed their father and she was the one who cast it. For Clement, magic is his lifeline. A distraction from his anger and pain. Even better than the random guys he hooks up with.

Cristina and Clement used to be each other’s most trusted confidant and friend, now they barely speak. But if they have any hope of discovering who is coming after their family, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other and their family's magic, all while solving the decades-old murder that sparked the still-rising tensions between the city’s magical and non-magical communities. And if they don't succeed, New Orleans may see another massacre. Or worse.

Terry J. Benton-Walker's contemporary fantasy debut, Blood Debts, with powerful magical families, intergenerational curses, and deadly drama in New Orleans.

New Orleans is a city seeped in magic, whether it's Anne Rice's vampires or Benton-Walker's magical families, it just wouldn't be the same in another setting.

Clem and Chris, twin siblings, have just lost their father, and now their mother is slowly wasting away, at least until they discover it isn't a disease but a curse. At which point it becomes a race to unravel what exactly happened thirty years ago, when a mayor's daughter was murdered and the Trudeau family was blamed for it. The adults just want to leave things alone and not go digging in the past, but the twins feel that if they don't figure this out, they may not have future.

There's a lot for these teenage characters to deal with, between a broken family, a deadly curse, being gay, bearing a burden of guilt you can't share, a boyfriend who betrays you, death, a dark being wanting your soul, gods, and a family feud going back generations. There was a lot to absorb in just four hundred pages. And indeed, not every thread gets resolved, which give me hope for a sequel. There are at least three story-lines that would would make an excellent sequel.

I enjoyed the magic system, a generational one, where you reach out to your ancestors to guide you. Recognizably based on voodoo, but still the author's creation, you learn very quickly that great gifts can lead to great darkness very easily. Using magic for little things like an ex-friend posting an embarrassing video of you on the internet, might come back on you instead.

And of course there is central core of the tale, revenge. How far should it go, and what are you willing to do to achieve it? Unfortunately I was again disappointed when the characters didn't rise above the dark and dirty things that the other family had done to them, but merely perpetuated it for yet another generation. I don't know if I had a better solution to the problem. You couldn't just put the villain away in prison, she could still do magic...and you'd also have to convince a mostly white and non-magical police force to convict her in the first place. Sometimes you have to take justice into your own hands, but I'm not convinced that was the right course of action here. We'll see if there is a second book if the consequences of this are explored.