(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I’d give this book 3.5 stars ideally. I had a lot of trouble connecting with many of the characters. The ones who were technically the good guys were actually quite weak. For instance, I would have liked Roric a lot more if he’d been a stronger character.
The more interesting (though not necessarily likable) characters were the not-very-nice ones. I did like Grefin, to an extent, but I felt he didn’t really help himself at times. And I felt some sympathy towards Belfre… at least for a while at first.
The first chapter of this book did pull me in and I would have liked to see more of the character introduced there and learn more of his history, rather than just the hints that were given.
I felt that the author did a good job showing the amount of politics that went into everything that was happening. The world was a pretty intriguing one, though every time I saw the word ‘leeching’ mentioned, I just thought that was referring to the use of actual leeches, rather than healing generally. Since, most of the time, it was in reference to someone having a wound, I kept being like, ‘But he’s already bleeding… oh, wait…’
There were some quite harsh things that happened in this book, but a lot of them did make sense. The world itself also had a lot of medieval themes, I noticed.
I did find Liam quite an interesting character and I liked his relationship with Benedikt. I’m not sure if I’d read the next books in this series, though it would be good to see what does happen with the characters at some point in the future.
Ink of Blood 