(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I found this book to be an intriguing fantasy read. At first, I didn’t know how the different storylines all fit together… and I’m still not sure how the very first chapter fit in with everything, although it was intriguing and did a good job of drawing me into the book and making me want to learn more.
It was good to see quite a lot of this world and the different cultures there were, though there were several occasions where the story skipped over scenes that were probably important that I felt should have been expanded.
I liked seeing Sume’s relationship with her nephew and it was sweet to imagine them as children playing together. Although I did feel some sympathy for Hana, after losing Oji and any money from his work, I didn’t much like her by the end of the book. There wasn’t enough about her to make her a more sympathetic character.
I didn’t like the fact that there were several chapters that slipped into present tense. I felt that was unnecessary and caused me to keep slipping out of the storyline.
I really liked Kefier’s character. I found him likable and sympathetic… and it was good to see that there was a lot more depth to him as the storyline went on. I did find Ylis an interesting character, though the switching between different POVs did confuse me, since it wasn’t always clear whose head I ended up in.
It was good to learn more about the history/mythology in this book and how it came up during the present time of the book. I did think that Dai was less of a sympathetic character. The first thing with Ylis, I could understand… later on, he just seemed to make even worse choices.
There were some quite creepy moments in this book and some very disturbing imagery. I thought it was interesting to see just how much was going on and that there seemed to be a lot of layers to this book and world. In the future, I’d like to read the next two books in this trilogy.
Ink of Blood 