(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
Although I haven’t read any of the other books in this series, I still found this to be really easy to read and follow the storyline. I wasn’t entirely sure about all of the relationships between the characters, but I was drawn easily into the book and what was going on.
There were a lot of parts of this book that were really intense to read… and some that were particularly disturbing. I couldn’t really understand Jurek’s motivations… though they made a bit more sense by the time I reached the end of the book.
The aspect of the book about family members being taken and the others being left behind was pretty awful to read about. Although there was quite a bit of this book that required a large amount of suspension of disbelief, I was able to keep reading it and actually ended up reading the book quite quickly.
Although there was a bit confusion with all of the third person narratives, I did find the characters and their motives easy to understand… well, apart from Jurek. I quite liked reading about Reidar and Mikael interacting with each other and their relationship. It was interesting to see that there was very little strain between them… though I would have liked to see a bit more of their interactions with each other. I couldn’t help feeling emotionally connected to Felicia and how I imagine she must have felt.
The psychiatric facility where Jurek was being held came across as incompetent at best. I didn’t particularly like any of the characters working there and I felt at least one of the characters overstepped his bounds a lot.
I found Saga to be a really interesting character, though I was less than thrilled with the constant references to how beautiful she was. I don’t think it’s necessary to keep saying that about a character personally.
I think I would be interested in reading the other books in this series. It would be good to see more of the characters and the blurbs of the other books sounded really intriguing.
Ink of Blood 