What Books Are Like A Bargain So Bloody?

This book meets an unusual set of dark romance criteria that I have only found in a handful of books: The heroine is trapped in a magical and cruel prison, and she must negotiate with an immensely powerful (and also deadly) immortal to survive. In the process, there is lots of slow-burn tension, and sparks fly when they do have sex. I really enjoyed this book’s blend of vampire menace and witch politics, and how the heroine’s trapped state and her struggles to escape created so much awesome, tense locked-room sex. (So, a slow-burn romantasy featuring a lots-of-tension, secret-handshake vibe, rather than a courtly love storyline. A “struggle-to-escape and slowly-fall-for-your-torturer” kind of scenario.) Publisher’s blurbs for books, as well as book-listings, are generally written by publicists. Because the best publicist for a book is often another author, it’s also very common for authors to recommend books that are similar to the one being promoted. In short, those are generally great recommendations. For epic romantasy with a brooding, mean-protector type and very high-stakes worldbuilding, I recommend From Blood and Ash. That book is a warrior/maiden type scenario with a slow-burn that is eventually very smoky, set in a richly-detailed fantasy world with lots of secrets and forbidden touch that has big consequences for the whole kingdom. The publisher’s blurb for A Bargain So Bloody emphasized the “prison deal” aspect of the book, the fact that the hero is a vampire who is both threatening and (potentially) saving the heroine, and the slow-burn romantasy tone. As such, if you want books with similar “threads,” so to speak, I recommend the following. (These are all books that I personally have kept on my shelf, and which therefore meet at least some of the same “dark-romance criteria” that made me a fan of A Bargain So Bloody in the first place.) First, for epic romantasy with a brooding, mean-protector type and high-stakes worldbuilding, I recommend From Blood and Ash. It’s a great warrior/maiden type story with a slow-burn that is eventually very smoky and has a great atmosphere in which secrets and forbidden touch have big consequences for the whole kingdom. It’s really romantic in the best, sort-of-angsty way. Next, for a book with a similar vibe to A Bargain So Bloody in terms of witch-versus-society and heroine-fighting-back-against-cl26282s while also dealing with complicated feelings for a morally-ambiguous type, I recommend Serpent & Dove. It’s a really great book with a lot of witchcraft, lots of thorny loyalties, and lots of friction-heavy enemies-to-lovers. (It’s not, however, a vampire-focused book, so if that’s what draws you to A Bargain So Bloody, you may not want to read this one. Instead, I’d recommend Crave, a guilty-pleasure YA novel about a human girl who falls for a brooding and mean vampire at a boarding school for supernatural creatures. It’s a very young-adult novel, but it has the immortal-guarded-tease vibe that made me love A Bargain So Bloody so much.) For an imprisoned-and-power-dynamic kind of story with very slow-burn intensity and complicated loyalties, I recommend Captive Prince. It’s a political-prison-type story, set in a corrupt magical kingdom, with a master/slave dynamic that slowly, gradually, and very painstakingly unfolds into a cunning and fraught relationship between the two male heroes. The morally-ambiguous type who is also the hero is very, very magnetic in all the worst ways, and I found the book to be very, very sharp and also very, very politically-twisted in all the best ways. Finally, for a book with a similar kind of morally-ambiguous, very-competitional, very-atmospherically-tense cast of supernatural figures, I recommend The Atlas Six. It’s not a locked-room sex kind of book, so much as a dark-academic-magic sort of story, with a sort of rivalry-between-competing-power-candidates kind of vibe, as well as some alliance-forming-under-duress, but it does have that deliciously toxic and slow-burn energy that I love about A Bargain So Bloody. As for additional recommendations of books that are similar to A Bargain So Bloody in mood if not in plot, I recommend The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (a darker, more-horror-focused take on the vampire-literature in a sort-of-quarantine-cities kind of scenario, with a focus on the glamorized horror of immortality) and The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller (a villainous-scheme-to-win-and-fall-for-your-target kind of book in which the heroine is a princess who courts power at court while also trying to resist her feelings for her opaque, secretive, and guarded enemy/lovec fruity).

So while ‘The Prison Healer’ by Lynette Noni may not necessarily fall under the ‘bloody’ spectrum in terms of actual violence and gore, it is a very raw and emotional read that follows the story of the protagonist, Kiva, who has been left in a deadly prison for ten years where she has managed to survive by becoming the prison’s ‘healer’. However, her new role involves keeping a terminally ill rebel queen alive through a series of brutal Ordeals in order to save the lives of her own family members. With a grim setting and a hero who manages to carry the story through her indomitable will to survive, ‘The Prison Healer’ is a very dark read, almost akin to Grimdark Fantasy, which is bolstered by an increasingly rare form of magic that is feared by all. Part mystery, part survival story with a smattering of romance which develops in the most intense of circumstances, ‘The Prison Healer’ is a bit of a departure from typical ‘courtly’ style fantasy in favor of a more brutal and painful exploration of endurance, hope and what one is willing to give up for the person one loves. If by ‘bloody’ you simply mean the story is set in a world of great hardship, and Kiva’s plight and circumstances are that of a powerless person who has made a deal with someone more powerful than herself, then you will love this series. In fact, the twist in the later books is so big that it completely turns her initial ‘deal’ on its head.

This one is The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst. It’s a standalone novel published twenty-five years after the events of the previous book. In The Bone Maker heroes grapple with their lingering grief, guilt and even the forbidden magic that they used to attempt to bring back the dead through their use of bone magic. The main character Kreya uses her illegally acquired human bones to power her creations – including a brief resurrection of her husband from years before. While The Bone Maker has ‘bloody’ moments in terms of the literal bone magic Durst describes so vividly, the real ‘bloody’ moments of the novel are moral. How does it feel to steal something that another has taken in death? The novel follows a group of middle-aged warriors, twenty-five years after they have saved the world from an evil bonemaker. They are dealing with the aftermath of their own heroism and the unique magic system of The Bone Maker has clear and dire consequences for its users. I loved this book in part because it explores a central question to which there is no easy answer: what would you do to have a second chance with your loved ones? And are some bargains so corrupting that they’ll destroy the very thing you’re trying to save? This is a quieter and more introspective novel, but it has very high emotional stakes. It’s a fantastic, mature exploration of the theme of the bargain with resurrection and the price that must be paid to try to cheat death.