I read this book as part of SPFBO 8, but this review is my individual opinion, and not the opinion of the panel I am part of.
‘Blood on the Canvas’ is the story of two people – the young girl (Sidneya) from an oppressed race is an aspiring artist, and the other (Nikolaj), is a genius artist who will stop at nothing for his art.
I have mixed opinions about this book.
The world building is good, with enough complexity around the lands, guilds, situation, and Orders like the Church and Loremasters.
Of the two main characters, I prefer Nikolaj to Sidneya since Nikolaj is a different archetype from other main characters, while Sidneya can walk into an YA story and not feel out of place. I like the interplay between the two MCs until a certain inciting incident, where the story splits in two, with each MC having their trials and tribulations.
My favourite portion of the book is the beginning – Sidneya's excitement when her art gets confiscated by the Gestapo equivalent, since that means that someone out there likes her art, appeals to me because almost all budding artists want validation.
Unfortunately, there are some things that didn't work for me.
For one, I thought art would play a much bigger role in the story, rather than just having artist tropes like homicidal rivalries and a nutcase genius. For a story where both the main characters are artists, I really would have preferred more content around art, beyond some passing content on making colours, frescoes etc.
Secondly, Sidneya's stories & Nikolaj's stories basically had nothing in common once they decided to go their separate ways. The merging of their story threads towards the end was quite abrupt.
Thirdly, Nikolaj is just way more interesting than Sidneya due to his unique perspective on life. That said, I am not a fan of how the author choses to reveal his character over the course of the book. I just feel that the sudden revelations into who he is, around the middle of the book, makes the story feel as though we have been reading about two different people. Sidneya’s character has quite a few issues around how it is constructed too – she tends to make many mistakes which are convenient to move the plot along, and generally speaking, is a bit naive for someone who takes mature decisions. I would be OK with both the MCs behaving this way, had they set up the right way.