(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
This is a book I have some quite mixed feelings about. The blurb on the back sounded really intriguing, but I felt that it wasn’t entirely accurate, because the book was very much more about the modern Richard and not so much about Richard the First.
There were some quite intriguing parts about this book, but I found the characters quite difficult to get behind. I think it was trying too hard to be a mixture of different genres; and, well, I didn’t really like Richard as a character.
I liked the storyline with Noor and I did feel that her reactions to certain things came across as really natural and realistic. I couldn’t believe in them being in love, though – there were hardly any scenes of them together before the engagement happened.
The historical pieces were fairly interesting, but I felt that they could have been worked a bit better… perhaps being written as a parallel storyline. There were some things that were attempted to be linked to modern-Richard’s storyline, but I think those failed for the most part.
I’m not sure if I’d read any more books by this author. It would have to depend on the book itself.
Ink of Blood 