Blood for Blood

Please note that this review may contain spoilers for Wolf by Wolf. You can read my review of this novel [here].

Blood for Blood was written by Ryan Graudin and first published in 2016. It is an alternate history story with science-fiction elements, set in a world where the Nazis won the Second World War and have spread out across most of Europe, Russia and Africa. The novel is the sequel to the excellent Wolf by Wolf (2015) and carries on exactly where this novel left off, so you really need to read them in sequence to fully appreciate them.

Yael’s mission failed in the worst possible way. The man she killed was not Hitler, but another skinshifter just like herself. Yet to the viewers watching the broadcast, it appeared that everything had gone to plan. The resistance began their battle against their oppressors, believing that the Nazi war machine had lost its head. Yet the National Socialists were as strong as ever and now hungry for revenge.

Barely escaping Tokyo with her life, Yael finds herself stranded in the wilds of Russia with Luka and Felix. Once allies, the three find their relationship strained. Felix is unable to trust Yael, not entirely believing that his sister is still alive and that the Resistance are not his enemy. Luka’s feelings are more conflicted. It is hard to accept that the racer he fell in love with was not Adele Wolfe, and harder still to accept that he might truly be in love with Yael.

Yael’s mission to topple Hitler from power seems to be doomed to fail, yet when she receives help from a very unexpected source she realises that they may have the tiniest chance. If they could only get the people of Germania to accept that their leaders are responsible for atrocities, perhaps they could gain enough support to fight back against the SS. However, to get evidence to prove this she will need to return to the place where her nightmare began…

Wolf by Wolf

Wolf by Wolf was written by Ryan Graudin and first published in 2015. It’s an alternative history novel with science fiction elements, set in a world in which Germany and Japan won World War II. The book is the first part of a planned duology, although at the time of writing no further instalments have been announced.

Yael has spent a full year of training to fulfill one simple goal: Kill Hitler. Imprisoned in a concentration camp as a child, she soon found herself subjected to the torturous experiments of Dr Geyer – a man determined to find a way to turn a dark featured person into an Aryan. His experiment had one unforeseen side effect. It gave Yael the ability to skinshift – to change her physical appearance to resemble that of any human female. Using her newfound ability to escape, she found a home for herself within the resistance.

Now, she bares a tattoo of five wolves to hide her identification brand and help her to remember the five people that she has lost to get that far. Her skinshifting has brought new hope to the Resistance who plan to use it as a way to get close enough to assassinate the reclusive Fuhrer. Her one chance to do so comes in the form of the Axis Tour – a grueling motorcycle race between Germania and Tokyo.

Posing as Adele Wolfe – the only female victor of the race – Yael enters. She has no choice but to win, it’s her only hope to come close enough to Hitler to kill him on camera. However, her victory is not assured. The Axis Tour is notoriously dangerous and the other challengers will stop at nothing to disable their competition. Additional obstacles in the form of Adele’s former lover and her overprotective brother also add unexpected complications to Yael’s mission. She knows that she cannot afford to be discovered. The fate of the world rests on her victory…

Spotlight – Wolf by Wolf

This post is brought to you in association with Rockstar Book Tours. Look out for my full review next month!

Author:  Ryan Graudin

Genre:  Alternative History / Science-Fiction

Page Count: 400

Release Date: 20 October 2015

 

A Special Note from the Author:

“Once upon a different time, there was a girl who lived in a kingdom of death. Wolves howled up her arm. A whole pack of them–made of tattoo ink and pain, memory and loss. It was the only thing about her that ever stayed the same.

Her story begins on a train.”

And so begins the story of Yael, a girl who can change her appearance to mimic any other female. A girl who must win a 20,000 kilometer cross-continental motorcycle race from Germania to Tokyo so that she can have an audience with Adolf Hitler. A girl who has every intention of killing him.

Whenever I describe the premise of WOLF BY WOLF to people, the reactions I get are quite similar. It’s the “are-you-insane-or-are-you-onto-something” face: dropped jaw, squiggly eyebrows. I must admit, I felt many of those same feelings when I first started penning Yael’s story. Alternate history + sci-fi + epic motorcycle journey felt like a strange recipe for a novel. But I pushed through my fears and kept writing, and I couldn’t be happier with the result. I, for one, don’t think I’m insane, but I’ll let you, dear reader, come up with your own conclusion.

Happy reading!

Ryan Graudin