Ink of Blood

(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).

(This review may contain spoilers).

When I first entered to win a copy of this book, I originally thought it was a historical novel set in Ancient Rome. It wasn’t until after I’d actually won it that I realised it was a fantasy. Or science fiction. Or a combination of both.

I like books with swords and sorcery in and have done ever since I started reading the Lone Wolf Adventure game books when I was much younger. Although this wasn’t entirely a unique storyline, it was an interesting take on the whole thing.

Although I was slightly confused with the constant changing of characters at first, I eventually got to know the characters and the storyline. It was good to see how everyone became connected throughout the course of the book.

I did like Cedrin as a character and I particularly liked Marken, too. I liked that the author had the characters actually get hurt and not be amazing fighters – and that they were skilled with certain weapons, but not all.

The descriptions in the book were particularly good. I found it really easy to empathise with the characters and the relationships that developed were good and believable.

There were a couple of humourous moments in the book that came across really well. The idea of the tattoos was quite an interesting one and I would have liked a bit more explanation about what they all meant, though the author did do a good job of imparting that information without actually creating an info-dump.

The book was really intense and kept me reading throughout. Although it was the second in a trilogy, I didn’t struggle with relating with the characters or get too confused about what was going on. I do intend to read the third and first books in this trilogy at some point in the future and I would also check out other books by this same author.