Hi everyone, I'm Shelby Mahurin, author of the Serpent and Dove series.
Today I will be recapping Blood and
Honey in preparation for the series finale Gods and Monsters coming out on July 27th.
Warning, there will be spoilers so if you haven't read the series thus far stop now,
unless of course you're like me and love spoilers,
in which case feel free to continue.
Either way, you've been warned.
[MUSIC]
The series follows Lou, a dame blanche, who is hiding from her villainous mother,
the queen of the witches, La Dame des Sorcières and the Chasseur, Reid,
who has fallen in love with her.
She loves him, too, most days.
They are bound as one to love, honor or
burn in 17th century French-inspired world.
There is also Coco, a dame rouge, and Lou's best friend,
Ansel, a Chasseur in training, and our resident cinnamon roll and Beau,
a himbo prince who doesn't really know why he's here.
He's gotten entangled with these people, he doesn't know why.
The book opens with Lou, Reid and
their friends hiding in the Forest of Eyes after escaping Morgane on Mogenite,
where she attempted to sacrifice Lou not for the first time, for the second time.
She's tried to kill her daughter twice.
Despite that, it is Reid who is all up in his feelings, and he has a lot of them.
To be fair, he has a lot going on.
He just murdered the archbishop, his patriarch and father figure.
He discovered that his real parents are Madame Labelle, a witch, and
King Auguste, the king of the entire country, the king of Belterra.
But the worst realization for him is that he himself,
after hunting them for the majority of his life, is a witch.
Womp womp.
In planning next steps, and eating onions, and arguing and making out in
Mountain Springs and celebrating Ansel's birthday early, the crew discover a note.
It's a note from Morgane, it's nonsensical.
It's slightly ominous, in that she knows where they are.
Pretty porcelain, pretty doll with hairs black as night.
She cries alone within her pall for tears so green and bright.
Naturally everyone decides to gather intel at a local pub, and
naturally they are discovered by bounty hunters who recognize them from
the wanted posters all over the walls.
Lou blows up said pub with the help of a mysterious stranger by the name of
Claud Devereaux.
It's at this point, however, that everyone realizes they are not powerful enough to
defeat Morgane by themselves.
They need help.
They hatch this scheme to gather allies, right?
They're going to split up and then reunite with said allies at the archbishop's
funeral which Reid has wrongly deduced is where Morgane is going to strike.
Maybe he's the himbo.
Reid, Beau and Madame Labelle travel to werewolf pack land with Claud Devereaux,
and his strange and enchanting traveling troupe called Troupe de Fortune,
while Lou, Coco and Ansel go to meet Coco's aunt, La Voisin.
She is the leader of the dame rouges, and they go to meet her at her blood camp.
Reid, in this process, wears leather pants and
eyeliner and he's a knife thrower in Troupe de Fortune.
Lou meets the eerie Nicholina,
a wraithe-like dame rouge who only speaks in riddles.
At the blood camp, Lou discovers children throughout the entire kingdom have been
going missing, and all signs point to Morgane because all of the victims have
one thing in common, they are all children of King Auguste.
From this she deduces that Morgane is planning to continue her nefarious plot,
with or without Lou's sacrifice.
So to recap, if Lou had died on the altar,
all of the king's children would have died with her, including Reid.
She did not die.
As we know, she ran.
So now Morgane is planning to hunt down, one by one,
to maim and torture them personally.
It's the personal touch for me.
After she targets two children from the blood camp,
La Voisin finally says enough is enough, and
she agrees to work with Lou and Coco and Ansel, to join forces against Morgane.
All the while Coco, who is in the center of a love triangle with Ansel and Beau,
finally kisses Ansel,
only to discover she has absolutely zero romantic feelings for him.
She just doesn't love him that way.
Understandably, Ansel is crushed.
When the squad reunites after a very scandalous performance between Lou and
Reid involving knives and a throwing board,
more bounty hunters catch up to them.
Reid is brutally stabbed and his balisarda [LAUGH] is eaten by a magic tree.
It's all fine though because Coco heals him with a mixture of, can you guess it?
Blood and honey.
[SOUND] They escape the bounty hunters and flee to Loup Garou pack land where they
are met with even more anger and hostility because darling Reid,
back in his good old days as a huntsman, of course killed the alpha's son.
He's been keeping that a secret this whole time.
As penance, he must agree to be hunted, or the pack will kill everyone.
So naturally, he agrees.
While he's off running for his life, Jean Luc and the huntsman finally
locate everyone else, they surround the pack land and they attack.
Enter Dark Lou, who terrorizes everyone with magic eyes.
For two reasons, one is to protect Reid, and two, is to kill the wolves,
huntsmen, basically anybody who looks at her wrong.
When the alpha's second son is injured in this attack, thankfully,
Reid and Coco intervene, save his life, and
that is why the Loup Garou agree to join forces with them against Morgane.
So we're two for two now.
Okay, let's see if we could push this.
They push this straight necessary.
The archbishop's funeral is looming closer, the clock is running out.
So Reid, Beau and
Madame Labelle come up with this brilliant idea to try to persuade King Auguste to
their side as well, with the werewolves and the blood witches.
It goes about as you would expect, the terrible man is in fact terrible, and
he imprisons his sons and his ex-lover.
Worse still, he threatens to torture them with rats,
which is a real medieval torture method.
The more you know.
Reid and Beau do manage to escape, but Madame Labelle does not.
She is still alive though.
That's something.
Things get worse for
Reid when Morgane doesn't attack at the funeral like he suspected she would.
And instead she gives them a third and final note, which Lou cracks.
She realizes that Morgane is holding Celie, Reid's childhood love and
Jean Luc's current one, in the tunnels beneath the city.
Worse still, she says she is going to eat Celie's heart if Lou does not come
rescue her by midnight.
So now we have a new clock, okay?
Before they go into the tunnels, Coco has a vision that a man close
to Lou's heart will die, which she obviously interprets to be Reid.
Determined to make that not happen, she sneaks away from the rest of the group,
and she goes down into the tunnels to save Celie by herself.
Unfortunately, one person does follow her, and that is Ansel.
Reid eventually realizes what has happened, and he leads the dame rouges and
the Loup Garou down into the tunnels after her.
But in the darkness of those tunnels, they are, like the kill Morgane crew,
is plucked out of the tunnels, into the darkness one by one.
No one knows what has happened to them.
While that's happening, Lou and Ansel do indeed find Celie, and Morgane,
and mother and daughter exchange blows.
Reid eventually catches up to them, with Claud, who is the woodwose, in fact.
He turns out to be this magical creature of the forest who has a history with
Morgane.
Some circles would call him a god.
He's obviously very, very powerful.
Morgane cannot hope to win, and
in a truly vile fashion she does the only thing she can to escape.
And that is to kill Ansel as a distraction.
Everyone is obviously distraught.
They're frantic, they're heartbroken, they can't bring Ansel back.
Coco's tears set the tunnels underneath the city ablaze with this magical
black fire that no one can extinguish because they stemmed from Coco's grief.
And in the final chapter of Blood and Honey, while everyone is mourning the loss
of their favorite character, La Voisin and Nicholina show their true colors.
They have been allied with Morgane all along, and
they perform a dark magic on Lou that will change everything.
The book ends in a kiss.
And that's it!
That's all you need to know about Blood and Honey to read Gods and Monsters.
Again, it comes out this July, July 27th.
I cannot wait for you guys to read it.
I cannot wait to hear your reactions.
I'm so excited!
See you guys soon.