(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
This is another book I had some trouble deciding how many stars to give it. The plot sounded really intriguing and I really liked the concept behind it… in particular how Qui kept reincarnating. The very first scene of the book instantly piqued my interest and made me want to see what would happen next.
I would say that the weakest part of this book was the romance. There was a lot of potential, but the ‘love at first sight’ trope is over-used… and for someone like Qui, who has lived for so long, I expected there would be more conflict. Especially since she’d vowed never to grow close to anyone after her previous life.
I did find it really interesting to see bits and pieces of Qui’s past lives and the fact that the people she’d had relationships with in those past lives seemed to mean just as much to her. I also thought it was interesting to see that she reincarnated into different genders, rather than being only female. That’s not something I see very often and it was a more unique twist.
I would have liked more details about the society. It seemed to take quite a while for it to be explained exactly why the Breed and the Purists were so bad. It was interesting to have the opportunity to see Qui’s interactions with others of her kind and I felt she was clearly a strong character and even though the romance did move far too quickly, it was good to see that she didn’t allow herself to be forced into becoming lesser than what she actually was. I also liked the fact that she wasn’t trusted immediately by the Resistance and had to prove herself.
I did think that a lot of the start of the book was glossed over. I was left very confused about how it all worked, at least until Qui explained things to David. The idea of the sharing was a particularly interesting one and I thought the after-effects on them came across really well.
Qui did go down in my estimation quite a bit after she did something I really didn’t agree with, but by that point, I was too emotionally invested in the book to stop reading it… even if I didn’t like Qui very much at that point.
I did think that the book was a bit slow-moving, with the action only really starting towards the end. I didn’t especially like the ending of the book, but I would be interested in reading more books set in this ‘verse and seeing more of Qui’s adventures and relationships with members of other species.
Ink of Blood 