Ink of Blood

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I have to say, first of all, that although the blurb of this book sounded really intriguing, the cover doesn’t really fit with the setting of the book. It’s a really nice cover… but it doesn’t seem to fit well with the feel of a historical book.

I was glad to see that the book stuck with one first person perspective. I liked Olivia. She came across as a character who had a lot of depth to her and I found it easy to empathise with her. She was likable and had a lot of depth to her. I also liked reading about how she interacts with the other characters around her.

I do think this book had too much of a modern feel to it. There was too much modern-day slang and swear words used and they kept throwing me out of the book. I was really quite disappointed, as it seemed that, apart from that, a lot of research had gone into building the world in this book. It was the language used that prevented me from being drawn into the book.

I thought Lucia and Marta were interesting characters. I thought it was good that Lucia was the one who was better at working the miracles and not Olivia, since it made Olivia a more well-rounded character.

It was interesting to be able to see more of the different gods and goddesses in those times and it was pretty cool to see the translations for the prayers they used. I liked the hints of some deeper feelings developing between Olivia and Gaius… but there wasn’t really the ‘payoff’ that I was expecting by the end of the book between them.

I thought some of the descriptions came across really well and there were times I was really able to emotionally connect with the characters. I would have liked to see more of Marta in this book… I saw a lot of Lucia and Olivia, but not really much of Marta, which was a shame, since there were hints that she was a character with a lot of depth to her.

I wasn’t sure I liked the ending. In many ways, it seemed rather anticlimactic, considering what went on before. At the same time, I would be interested in reading a sequel to this book and seeing more of Olivia and Gaius especially.