Shattered Sacrifice by Emily Huffman
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by AstilbeGlisenia Tideborn knew two things:
One – She wasn’t dead anymore.
Two – She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her ever again.
After being sacrificed to the Kraken by her family, Glisenia Tideborn never expected to have a future. Given an unexpected second chance, she wants to run far away from the people who sentenced her to death. But the Kraken still demands its sacrifice, and a dark whisper in her mind has different plans for her. Will Glisenia do what the voice asks of her, or is she destined to die again?
Would you give in to the temptation of revenge?
Glisenia’s anger intrigued me. Yes, she had been horribly mistreated, but I also found myself wondering how she was planning to learn to control her rage in the future. It overwhelmed her so easily that I could see how that could be a problem under the wrong circumstances. This was something that popped up almost immediately in the storyline which only further piqued my curiosity. It’s not every day that a character reveals their biggest fault in the opening scene!
I did find myself wishing for a little more world building in this novelette. While I’d never expect to see as much of that in a shorter work as I would in a full-length novel, there were some aspects of Glisenia’s background that were confusing to me. For example, the reason why she was chosen to be sacrificed never quite made sense to me. It was vague enough that it seemed like it could have been applied to many other girls in her community. I would have appreciated more details about how it all worked and would have gone with a full five-star rating if that information had been included.
The horror themes were handled nicely. Human sacrifice is a terrifying subject no matter who the victim is, but the fact that Glisenia was a child only added an extra layer of fear to it all. The descriptions of how she was murdered made me shudder, especially when the narrator hinted at how many other girls had suffered the same painful fate in the past.
Shattered Sacrifice was an exciting read.
