The Alchemists of Loom – ARC Review

Hi guys, I apologize because I haven’t posted a review in a while, November has been a crazy busy month! But no fear, I have a few reviews to post before the month ends! Let’s begin with today’s post; The Alchemists of Loom!

I had the honor of receiving an ARC for Elise Kova’s first book of her new “Loom” saga, and I participated in a read along with other people who received an arc too! It was a very fun experience, which also motivated me to read this as quick as possible to talk about it with everyone! Now, a little about the book:

The Alchemists of Loom (Loom Saga #1)
by Elise Kova
380 Pages
Expected Publication: January 10, 2017.
Goodreads Rating: 4.61 stars (59 Ratings)

My rating: 4.5 – ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ 

“Her vengeance. His vision.

Ari lost everything she once loved when the Five Guilds’ resistance fell to the Dragon King. Now, she uses her unparalleled gift for clockwork machinery in tandem with notoriously unscrupulous morals to contribute to a thriving underground organ market. There isn’t a place on Loom that is secure from the engineer turned thief, and her magical talents are sold to the highest bidder as long as the job defies their Dragon oppressors.

Cvareh would do anything to see his sister usurp the Dragon King and sit on the throne. His family’s house has endured the shame of being the lowest rung in the Dragons’ society for far too long. The Alchemist Guild, down on Loom, may just hold the key to putting his kin in power, if Cvareh can get to them before the Dragon King’s assassins.

When Ari stumbles upon a wounded Cvareh, she sees an opportunity to slaughter an enemy and make a profit off his corpse. But the Dragon sees an opportunity to navigate Loom with the best person to get him where he wants to go.

He offers her the one thing Ari can’t refuse: A wish of her greatest desire, if she brings him to the Alchemists of Loom.”

First of all, I’d like to say that I never compare a book to another when I am writing a review; but this book made me feel strong connections to Divergent and Six of Crows.

Why would I compare this to Divergent? Well, we find ourselves with a divided society. The people of Loom are divided in Guilds, and they must take two tests before joining them. If they do not pass these tests, they are sentenced to death.

The five guilds are:
•Harvesters – We don’t see them through this book (or not that I can remember), but these are the people who supply raw materials to the other guilds.
•Alchemists – They create the Chimeras, they seem to be the only guild that’s not under the Dragon’s control, they’re far from the others – territory wise –
•Rivets – They work in the mines and the refining process.
•Ravens – From what I understood, they seem to be the ones who do all the transportation.
•Revolvers– They make GUNS AND EXPLOSIONS!

The people from the Guilds live in Loom, which is the place where the Dragon King has taken control; while the Dragons live in Nova. Our main setting for this book is Loom, while the second book appears to have Nova as it’s main setting.

Now, why would I compare this to Six of Crows? First, I love books where the author can pull off multiple POVs! It’s not an easy task, and Elise Kova has nailed it! There are various scenes that reminded me of SoC, mainly because our main characters are doing a break-out from a very secured jail. THIS SCREAMED SIX OF CROWS TO ME!

Our characters are very unique, I love seeing a diverse cast. Each one has very different characteristics and somehow they all fit and work well together (Although there’s some very rough hate at first.)

The first 100-ish pages of the book seemed a bit slow to me. It can’t be easy to build a world and at the same time involve some action in it, so this is understandable. At first it was so difficult for me to understand the world, like I said… we have two lands and five guilds (also, the Dragons are divided in three houses).

We have various main characters, but I’d say Arianna is the “main of the mains” haha. She is such a badass female character! She hates Dragons – which you’ll find out why in the book – but it’s surprising when she finds herself trusting Cvareh, who wants to overthrow the King and to work with her to do so.

We also have the lovely Florence, she was my favorite character! I wanted to ship her with Arianna, I don’t know why, but they seemed to have that kind of chemistry that lovers have. Arianna openly identifies herself as a bisexual, she was in love with a woman – who’s now dead – so this definitely made me ship her with Florence more. But don’t get too excited, I think Florence is going to be sent to the sister-zone. Also, there seems to be some love/hate romance going on with Cvareh and I don’t know how to react to this.

ELISE KOVA, DO NOT TOY WITH MY FEELINGS OK.

Before wrapping-up my review, here’s my favorite quote from the book:

“Adulthood just meant finding the variety of crazy that resonated the most with you and doing it until you died or it killed you—whichever came first.”

Our characters go outside of what they were “told to do”. Arianna and Florence do not want to be a part of a Guild just because they were told to. They want to do bigger things. Cvareh is part of the lowest ranked Dragon house, and he wants to prove to be more than that. This is something our three characters have in common, which is why I love that quote so much.

The book was greatly built to leave us with the perfect opening for a rebellion in the second book, with that being said I CANNOT WAIT to get my hands on that second book!

The Alchemists of Loom comes out in January 10, 2017.
While the second book in this amazing saga comes out in April 2017!
(WHAAAAT!? YES!)