(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I did think that the front cover and the blurb of this book sounded really intriguing. And I did like Llad as a character through a lot of the book. However… I have to say, I was somewhat disappointed.
I felt like I’d missed a lot of the story. I was expecting to be shown how Llad developed his powers… but it was all explained through exposition, which wasn’t really interesting and had me skim-reading a whole lot of it.
I did find Llad’s relationship with some of the other characters to be quite interesting, especially with Brite. But I was confused by how Brite had changed so much… but there were huge passages of time (and enormous amounts of character development) that were glossed over.
I did like Frey’s appearance and it was a little disappointing that her past and character motivations weren’t explored more. I felt there were some parts of the book that moved really slowly… while the action seemed intense, concentrated in really small amounts.
I did feel there was some stereotypical behaviour in this book. There were some errors in the writing, but I did find it mostly believable. I didn’t like Llad as much by the end of the book, I have to say. He was more hero material earlier on.
Although this book was an intriguing read for part of it, I would have liked this more if there’d been much less exposition and more showing the training and what was going on. I don’t think I’ll read the second book in this series as it stands right now.
Ink of Blood 