Spotlights

Advent Dec 15th 2024

Spotlights1 month ago4 min read1 comment

Welcome to Day One of our Indie Fantasy Advent Calendar! We’re featuring an underrated indie author every day this holiday season to spread a little festive joy and promote authors we think deserve more love. Read our introduction to find out more.

Let’s open day fifteen and see what book lies behind…

Today, on December 15th, we’re opening our calendar to Blood Price by Nicole Evans.

The law of the gods is those who kill must pay for it in blood.

In the land of Armadin, where nine clans exist in a fragile peace, Ashilde is one of the few chosen to pay the blood price. Through it, she becomes a warrior, capable of killing to protect her clan—alongside her hunters, who provide the essential animal sacrifice, lest they become the next clan to suffer the gods’ wrath.

When an attack wipes out their few remaining hunters, Ashilde must find a way to protect her clan and still appease the gods, despite her shaken faith. But when her monthly bleeding stops, she can no longer kill. Cast out by the gods’ decree, she’s given a single task: travel to the gods’ realm, atoning for the failures of the clan and herself alike. If she dies, another will be sent in her place, until the demanded atonement is fulfilled or her clan is wiped out. Entirely.

Bound by a promise to protect her people above all else, Ashilde embarks on a quest driven for answers. Aided only by a pair of animals and a small child she meets along the way, Ashilde must battle the elements, her pursuers and her own mind to reach the gods’ realm.

To save her people, Ashilde’s journey forces her to answer the ultimate is she willing to pay the price asked of her, now that she can no longer pay in blood?

Blood Price is an exciting feminist fantasy inspired by Norse mythology, and I love this description of the book from a reader on Goodreads: “A warrior too angry to die goes directly to the gods for answers after they take everything she held dear.”

I haven’t personally read this one, but the cover is absolutely gorgeous and it comes highly rated by the one and only Jamedi. Let’s see what he has to say about it:

“Blood Price is a powerful debut, an excellent novel for those that look for a character driven fantasy with excellently painted characters, characters that also struggle to fulfill what they are expected to (and I would totally say Ash might have impostor syndrome); I’m quite curious to see the second part of the duology because I’m so intrigued by the ending. Can’t wait to return to Armadin!”

This is definitely going on my TBR! Join me in and Check out Blood Price:

About the Author

Nicole Evans (she/hers) is a queer, disabled SFF writer with an MFA in Fiction who’s been stuck in the Midwest of America since birth, but hopes to escape to a forest someday. Her earliest memories writing stories were from 6th grade, where she wrote an epic tale of her entire class fighting off flying pigs and skeletons with red eyes that carried buckets of bloody-red daggers. (Her creativity has stuck with her, but she hopes she’s learned more plot since then.) She has written eight novels, countless short stories and lots of smutty fanfiction. Her ninth novel, Blood Price, made her authorial debut in 2024.

When not writing, she can be found bemoaning the size of her TBR pile, avoiding the main mission in RPGs until every side quest is done, obsessing over trees, watching birds she can’t name, getting another tattoo and eating a lot of sharp cheddar cheese.

She lives with her sci-fi streaming partner, Edward, and their two pets: Sasha the cat and Dovahkiin the dog. You can find her online via her LinkTree.