(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I would ideally give this book 2.5 stars out of 5. I really wanted to like it… but unfortunately, I felt that it needed quite a bit of editing. There were a lot of words that didn’t fit and repetition that I felt didn’t really work. (‘Cloud room’ was used three times in one paragraph, for instance).
The idea behind the book was really interesting, although I wouldn’t have said the title fit with the storyline. I felt that things came far too easy for the characters. There was very little foreshadowing and I felt that there was too much telling rather than showing. For instance, Ares was supposed to be uttering really funny lines… but nothing that I read from him should have garnered those kinds of reactions from the others.
I did think that Aiden accepted the situation far too quickly. I would have liked some more details about how him and the other three related to the gods they were apparently avatars of. There was very little actual explanation in this book… and the characters seemed to have very little curiosity about what was going on.
It was good to see the other characters like Hermes and Dionysus in this book, though I didn’t think they showed much of the personalities from the mythos. I would have liked to know more of Ares and Athena before the quest began. While it was good to see something of Ares beforehand, I didn’t have a clue about Athena’s life beforehand.
I did find myself getting quite confused about what was going on most of the time. I would have liked to see the characters have to work more for what was going on and for there to be less ‘I had a bad feeling’… that then turns out to be accurate. I know there’s instinct and all, but I didn’t feel the characters were in any real danger… and even when they got hurt/made mistakes, it was all dealt with without any consequences or problems.
I won’t be reading a sequel to this book as it stands.
Ink of Blood 