{"id":82072,"date":"2026-02-15T03:55:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T08:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/?p=82072"},"modified":"2026-02-21T06:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:53:27","slug":"review-we-who-will-die-empire-of-blood-1-by-stacia-stark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/?p=82072","title":{"rendered":"Review: We Who Will Die (Empire of Blood, #1) by Stacia Stark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buy: Amazon<\/a><\/b><\/h4>\n
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\r\n <\/div><\/div><\/b><\/h4>\n
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Review<\/b><\/h4>\n

3 stars<\/b><\/p>\n

A slow-burn romantic fantasy blend of roman gladiators, the Hunger Games, and vampires, the blurb of this book instantly grabbed my attention. I dove in with high expectations, but it didn\u2019t quite hit the mark for me. It\u2019s an enjoyable read, but it wasn\u2019t the epic romantasy that I was expecting.<\/p>\n

I liked the premise \u2013 though it isn\u2019t entirely unique and is somewhat predictable at first – but there are some twists and turns along the way, and it\u2019s certainly an interesting journey for Arvelle as she literally fights for her life, and the lives of her family. The story is violent and intense in places, and is mostly fast-paced, but there\u2019s a lot that happens in this book without a lot of actual progression.<\/p>\n

The world, though complex and intriguing, often feels murky and unclear. There\u2019s not a lot of world building, instead, you\u2019re just thrown into this complicated world and piece things together as you go. I actually questioned whether there was a prequel that I had missed that provided missing context, but nope. There\u2019s a lot of information thrown at you, but I feel like I didn\u2019t really get a strong handle on the intricacies and politics of the world until I was towards the end of the book.<\/p>\n

I love to get swept up in my books, and while the characters are likeable, I didn\u2019t feel a lot for them. And as a romance girly who falls in love with pretty much every male romantic lead I read, that\u2019s unusual for me. The most interesting character is the dark and mysterious \u2018bad guy\u2019, I\u2019m so intrigued by him and all of his secrets! There\u2019s a lot of side characters, but a lot of them are very one dimensional and mostly forgettable, including our actual main bad guy. I mean, who is he? Why is he so evil? As such an important piece of the story, we really don\u2019t know too much about him at all.<\/p>\n

The romance is there, but very much in the background and I wouldn\u2019t classify this as true romantasy. It certainly wasn\u2019t the epic love that I was hoping for, and given the premise of the romantic storyline, the potential for epic was absolutely there. That said, this could be intentional given the hint of a future love triangle, and I\u2019m curious to see where that particular storyline goes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this time I thought leaving you had smashed my heart into pieces, and I\u2019d be picking shards from my chest until the day I died. But my heart wasn\u2019t smashed. I left it with you, and you\u2019ve held it hostage ever since.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So yeah, this one wasn\u2019t exactly what I was hoping for, and while I wasn\u2019t swept away, I am invested enough to continue the series and see where it goes.<\/p>\n

3 stars.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Empire of Blood<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"\" \u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

We Who Will Die (#1)<\/strong>
\nReview
\nBuy: Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

We Who Will Rise (#2)<\/strong>
\nTo be released 19 January 2027
\nPre-order:\u00a0 Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buy: Amazon Review 3 stars A slow-burn romantic fantasy blend of roman gladiators, the Hunger Games, and vampires, the blurb of this book instantly grabbed my attention. I dove in with high expectations, but it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","yasr_overall_rating":3,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,522,9],"tags":[1657,48,1656],"class_list":["post-82072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action","category-fantasy","category-romance","tag-empire-of-blood","tag-review","tag-stacia-stark"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/We-Who-Will-Die.jpg?fit=200%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gaNL-llK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82072"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82193,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82072\/revisions\/82193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapistbookblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}