Minerva Alumni Book Review: "The Heir of Blood and Secrets" by Linda Xia

In our Alumni Book Review Series, Mira, Class of 2025 will be digging into alumni-written works and then interviewing the authors. The aim of this series is to encourage others in the community to delve into the literary creations of Minerva alumni.

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In the grand hall of the annual council gathering, the air is charged with anticipation. The room boasts the most influential people from Devovea: the wealthiest, the magistrates, and the crown, all convened in one place to debate and decide on the future of the nation. Scylla, the daughter of the Magistrate Delevan, and heir to the Council Seat, is patiently listening to the speech prepared by her father and his colleague, Magistrate Reas. As Scylla tries to conceal her disagreement with the proposed defense bill aimed at curbing the rising unrest outside the castle walls, everything halts abruptly. Reas collapses and blood pools across his chest. Silence engulfs the room. The world as Scylla knows it is beginning to fracture.   

This is a small illustration of a scene from Linda’s, Class of 2022, debut novel, The Heir of Blood and Secrets, published in 2021. Her work follows Scylla Delevan on her journey of finding the person responsible for the murder of Magistrate Reas while discovering the darkest secrets hidden within the Castle. As Scylla delves into Devovea’s history, a nation with a mysterious past, the reader is drawn into a whirlwind of intrigue and scandal. With each page turned, the reader walks alongside Scylla, sharing her discoveries and dilemmas. Ultimately, the read is thrilling, a tour de force in storytelling that smashes down gender norms, tradition, and story tropes such as the “chosen one.”

“I don’t like the ‘chosen one’ trope in general because I think it’s unhelpful… it really makes the circumstances of your birth this really important, all-defining thing, and I think that you should be able to choose to do exactly what you want… it is entirely unfair for someone to go, ‘oh you but you know, it said that you have to save the world, so you have to go save the world now,” notes Linda when we interviewed her back in December. The “chosen one” trope traditionally portrays a person who is prophesied to overcome significant challenges and achieve great things. In many narratives, the “chosen one” is at first reluctant to fulfill their destiny but then comes to still accomplish it throughout the story. This trope had key philosophical appeal to Linda as she saw it written over time and time again in the stories she was reading. She wanted to write something different, something she would have liked to read herself and that challenged this common narrative structure. 

Oftentimes Linda drew inspiration from her own life and her academics. For example, after taking a class on motivation and human behavior, Linda was able to integrate her acquired knowledge into thinking through how certain characters would respond to situations or pursue certain quests and goals. After an Economics class that looked at different economies across the world, Linda was able to establish core principles for the setting of Devovea. Traveling to different cities and meeting new people was also key to inspiring aspects of the novel. One of the main characters, Ilya Ochion, was inspired by a chance encounter while on rotation in Berlin; altruism and kindness at the forefront of the budding relationship of a newly found friend. 

The book has long been in the making. Linda officially decided to write it in 2014 after learning about National Novel Writing Month, which is a global challenge where people around the world attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. At the time, she didn’t necessarily see herself as a writer but was drawn to the challenge. Since 2014, those first 50,000 words have gone through a lot of iterations.  

Linda initially attempted the formal publishing route for a few years, which is, according to her, a long, tedious, and unrealistic way to live – conferences, talking to agents, and writing email after email did not move the needle for her work. She put a pin in the project, began her four years at Minerva, and did not revisit the work until the global pandemic interrupted her senior year. She returned home for the semester, fell into a month of self-pity, and felt motivationally depleted. She couldn’t wake up for her classes, she couldn’t, in her words, “do anything but feel sorry for myself.” So she went back to the book and used it as a kind of lifeline to bring purpose back into her world. From there, the writing and finishing process moved fairly quickly. “It’s a lot easier to write quickly because you don't have enough time to worry about what you’re doing or not doing,” says L.

At its core, Linda notes that The Heir of Blood and Secrets is about a girl whose father is accused of murder, and her journey to find the real murderer. We won’t spoil anything further, but Linda says that she really went back and forth on whether or not Scylla’s father actually did do the murder, but ultimately “you have to make a decision at some point.” If you want to find out the truth, we highly recommend giving it a read.

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