The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le
Published by Simon and Schuster
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Authors, Asian Characters, Gay Characters, OwnVoices Representation, Magic Users, Vietnamese Culture, Epic Fantasy, Medical Fantasy, Romantasy, Blood Magic, Healing Magic, Asian Mythology, Family Drama
Series: The Last Bloodcarver #1
My Rating:
Published on: 21st March 2024
Pages: 384
Disability Representation: Brain Injury, Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD)
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Forbidden Planet / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones / BookBeat Audio
Add to Goodreads

Nhika is a bloodcarver. She has the power to alter human biology – to heal or to harm with just a touch.

'You’ll gasp, you’ll scream, you’ll cry, and you’ll be begging for the next book.' Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights

In Theumas, Nhika is seen as a monster who kills for pleasure, and her gift is highly prized in the city’s criminal underworld. When Nhika is finally captured, she is sold to the highest bidder – an aristocratic girl dressed in white. But her mysterious buyer is not looking for an assassin. She needs Nhika to heal the only witness to her father’s murder.

Nhika vows to hunt down the killer and all signs point to Ven Kochin, an alluring yet entitled physician’s aide. Despite Kochin’s relentless attempts to push her away, Nikha can’t help feeling drawn into his opulent world. But she soon finds herself in a fight for her life – and for the future of her own kind.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

Please note
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programmes I earn a small commission from items purchased using links featured in this post at no extra cost to you. Click here to learn more. Every purchase you make through Just Geeking By helps keep this blog running.

The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le sounded very intriguing, promising a unique mixture of science and fantasy. The problem with mixing those two different concepts is that it isn’t easy to get right. Would this be a win or a loss?

In The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le, Nhika is a healer, following an ancient tradition using abilities she was born with. Under the guise of a homoeopathic healer, she uses her abilities in secret, accepting payment at clandestine appointments where she heals patients failed by doctors. While doctors rely on science, Nhika can look directly inside a body and seek out the root of an illness or injury. But healer isn’t what people call her; she’s known as a Bloodcarver, feared for her abilities and hunted for them.

When an appointment goes wrong and Nhika gets caught, she finds herself being sold to the highest bidder. Among the buyers is someone who wants to eat her. When she’s bought by a teenage girl who turns up with an absurdly high bid, Nhika has no idea what could happen next. Prepared to run for it at the first opportunity, she’s stunned when she finds she’s been bought by one of the wealthiest families to help heal a man in a coma.

The more time she spends with the siblings and their bodyguard, she realises there is more going on, and she eventually learns that the injured man is the only witness to their father’s murder. As Nhika works to help heal her patient, she struggles with her past, and identity as a Bloodcarver. Her limited training might be her undoing, and as she seeks help, she unwittingly puts herself in danger. Is the enigmatic yet confusing physician’s aide, Ven Kochin, someone she can trust or someone who will destroy her?

The Last Bloodcarver is an ambitious fantasy novel that aims to mix elements of fantasy, folklore and science. It’s a bold task and one that Le accomplishes well. I think what makes it work is that Le doesn’t try to blend the scientific and fantasy elements too much. For example, Nhika’s training, while spotty, is very different to the medical training of a doctor. This means that she has no medical jargon for what is happening in the body, and that allows Le to wash over a lot of science through her protagonist’s ignorance.

While that may seem like a convenient way to avoid dealing with the subject, Le’s character-building is solid, and it is completely fitting with Nhika’s character that she does not know these things. Le also introduces other information that shows further merging of science and fantasy, but that is a spoiler, and you’ll need to read The Last Bloodcarver for yourself to find out more 😉

There are many layers to this book, and through the characters and sub-plots, Le tackles many difficult themes and topics in The Last Bloodcarver. These include but are not limited to grief, trauma, generational trauma and genocide. I’ve not seen anyone else list this as dark fantasy; however, due to some of the content in it, I feel that it fits that genre.

The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le offers unique world-building, characters you will grow to love and a story that will draw you in.

About Vanessa Le

Vanessa Le graduated from Brown University with a degree in Health and Human Biology and now resides in the Pacific Northwest. Her writing is an expression of her love for medicine and her Vietnamese heritage. When not writing, she’s wishing she was writing, studying medicine, and/or spoiling her two Shiba Inus.

Website | Goodreads | Instagram | Twitter

Thanks for reading my book review for The Last Bloodcarver by Vanessa Le! The duology completes with His Mortal Demise out in March 2025!

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my reviews if you’re looking for some more book recommendations 🙂 You can also now sign up for my newsletter to get an email each month with a list of my new reviews!

Support Just Geeking By

I hope you enjoyed this post! If you did please consider sharing it on social media using the nifty buttons at the end of this post <3

If you enjoyed this content please consider helping to support my blog. You can do this in multiple ways (click here to find out how!) or by donating via Ko-Fi to help me reach my current goal.