You duel or you die. That single line, drilled into Astrid Nachstern’s head from the time she was eight, is the heartbeat of Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter, the debut fantasy from the writing duo of Katie Ellis-Brown and Becky Hunter. Marketed for the Fourth Wing crowd and pitched as the opening salvo of the Cursed Covenant trilogy, this is a book that knows exactly which itch its readers want scratched, and goes after it with two daggers, a panther familiar, and a dragon prince who calls his witch nemesis “Dimples.”
It also occasionally trips over its own ambitions. We’ll get to that.
A premise that earns its high-stakes label
The setup leans on a centuries-old magical covenant. Every generation, the heirs of Arturea (witches) and Vatra (dragon riders) have to fight to the death for control of the Heart, the source of all magic in their world. Astrid, the last Nachstern witch and queendom heir, has spent twenty-four years preparing for a duel she fully expects to lose against Prince Zryan, the most powerful dragon rider in eons. Meanwhile, in the Stone City of Talrok, a sharp-tongued blade juggler named Skylar arrives with her travelling troupe to make coin off the spectator crowds. When her best friend Cam vanishes, suspected of being swept up in the king’s conscription of the Blooded, her hunt drags her right into the gilded mouth of the royal court.
How those two threads collide is what makes the first third of Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter work as well as it does. There’s a twist roughly a hundred pages in that recalibrates everything, and to the authors’ credit, they refuse to coast on it. The fallout becomes the engine of the book.
The dual POV that does the heavy lifting
Astrid and Skylar are written like two halves of an argument the genre has been having with itself for a decade. Astrid is the polished, dutiful princess raised on prophecy. Skylar is the orphaned street rat with a hairpin sharp enough to slit a throat. Their voices are distinct enough that you rarely need to glance at the chapter heading to know whose head you’re in.
What lands beautifully:
- Astrid’s slow unspooling from “compliant heir” to a woman willing to commit treason for the people she loves.
- Skylar’s grief over Cam, which the authors refuse to flatten into a tidy revenge plot.
- The friendship that grows between the two women in the smallest of moments, often through gallows humor rather than grand declarations.
- Familiars Bastet (a panther) and Kaida (a baby dragon) given enough personality and snark to feel like real characters rather than accessories.
Where I felt the seams: a few of the secondary players in the Vatran court, Axel especially, hover in the wings without quite earning the screen time they’re given. The book sets up dominoes here that I assume will fall in book two, but in this volume some of them just sit there.
Romance: yes, the dragon prince is a problem
The Astrid and Zryan dynamic is the engine room. It’s enemies-to-lovers in the proper sense, by which I mean both of them have legitimate, blood-soaked reasons to want the other dead, and the authors don’t try to hand-wave that away. Zryan’s introduction in the dungeons, which I won’t describe further, is one of the most effective character entrances I’ve read in romantasy this year. The man is genuinely menacing before he’s allowed to be charming, and that grounds every later soft moment.
Steam level lands somewhere between Throne of Glass and the more explicit end of Fourth Wing. Two scenes are properly on the page, and the build-up across the six-week countdown is paced with care. Skylar’s romantic arc is more muted in book one, which felt right rather than shortchanged.
Worldbuilding: ambitious, occasionally crowded
Arturea is a queendom of witches who bond with familiars. Vatra is a kingdom of Blooded who can sometimes earn dragons through trial on the volcanic island of Isla Draka. There are roughly a dozen named magical orders, from Exhausters to Flame Throwers to Sensors to Projectors, each with neat little rules. The Stone City shimmers with sandstone spires, and Isla Draka delivers some of the book’s best setpieces.
The flip side: the proper-noun density in the early chapters is steep. Vaar, Sqaõi, Arach, the Heart, the Blight, the Covenant, the Dreki, the Ulvene, all introduced in a tight stretch. Readers who like to ease into a fantasy gradually may want a glossary tab open. The audiobook would probably do half this work for you.
The writing style holds up
The prose is propulsive, present-tense, and unafraid of a curse word. Skylar’s chapters in particular crackle with the kind of voice that makes you forgive shortcuts elsewhere. The authors clearly understand pacing. Chapters are short, hooks are sharp, and the six-week countdown structure keeps the page count from feeling its full weight.
A few craft notes worth flagging:
- Internal monologue occasionally over-explains feelings the scene already conveyed.
- A handful of action beats blur together when too many magical abilities fire at once.
- The political layer involving the rebellion is sketched in broad strokes that I suspect needed another pass.
None of this is fatal. Most of it is the cost of co-writing a debut that’s juggling three subplots, two romances, and a magical murder contest.
Where critique earns its keep
If you’ve read enough romantasy, the bones of Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter will feel familiar. The chosen heir, the cruel king, the morally grey prince, the secret sibling, the hidden power. The book leans into those tropes openly. What it sometimes lacks is the sense that it’s interrogating them rather than checking them off. The four-star average rating feels honest to me. There’s plenty here to love and a few corners where the book is content to sit comfortably inside the genre rather than push at it.
Comparable reads for your shelf
If Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter lands for you, consider:
- Fourth Wing and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros for the dragon-bond catnip.
- Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas for the political stakes and slow-burn dynamic.
- The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen for the enemies-to-lovers political marriage flavor.
- The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent for darker romantasy with a duel structure.
- Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli if the witch side appealed most.
This is the debut Ellis Hunter novel under that joint pen name. Becky Hunter has published contemporary fiction under her own byline, and Katie Ellis-Brown comes from the editorial side of UK publishing, which goes some way toward explaining the polish here.
Should you read it
If you came for dragons, witches, banter, and a prince who’s a problem in three different languages, Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter delivers. If you want a genre redefinition, this isn’t that book. As a setup for a trilogy, though, the closing chapters land with enough force that I’ll be in line for book two.