(I received a free copy of this book from 47North Publishers, through NetGalley, in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
Despite feeling plunged into the deep end with this book, I still found it really entertaining and easy to read.
I could tell that the characters had lives before the book started, considering I was thrown into the action almost straight away. It took me a little while to be able to differentiate between certain characters, but by the end of the book, I had some pretty clear favourites – like Indris and Mari. I’d like to see more of their relationship in the next two books.
I also liked Shar as a character. I did find it a bit hard to picture some of the characters in my mind, though. I wasn’t sure of all of the physical differences between the different races.
I found the world to be quite an interesting one. The idea of the Awakenings was quite a good one and I felt that there was a good range of characters in the book. I could understand the motivations of a couple of the bad guys, but there was one in particular I couldn’t understand nearly as well.
There were some things that shocked me in the book and I liked a lot of the world-building and particularly the idea about Nomads. Part of the ending really surprised me and made me want to read the other books in the trilogy – both of which I have saved on my Kindle.
Get a copy:
The Garden of Stones (Echoes of Empire, Book 1)
The Garden of Stones (Echoes of Empire, Book 1)
Ink of Blood 