(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
When I read the blurb of this book originally, I found the idea quite intriguing… even though I haven’t actually read the first book in the series. I did find this book fairly easy to read (it took me a while to finish due to a lot of things going on this week), but I did find a lot of it quite confusing.
I did find Dandalus a character who was difficult to relate to emotionally. There were a lot of interesting aspects to him, but the fact that he had no emotional attachment to his wife and daughter didn’t make him a very sympathetic character. I felt like there was a lot of telling rather than showing going on.
I thought that the idea about the column and column children was intriguing, though I was quite confused by the explanation. The idea about the incarnations was quite a good one… even though it seemed to render the whole trial as not necessary.
I found the sons of thunder to be really intriguing characters, but I would have liked to see a bit more of their individual personalities. It was good to see Mischief interacting with Dandalus, even though I felt there was a bit too much glossed over and the bond between them wasn’t allowed to develop in a natural way.
There were some good elements of foreshadowing in this book and some of the secondary characters were interesting. I did like the whole idea of the robots and how they were revealed… but there were a lot of things that were left by the wayside, such as the scenes leading up to the electricity being turned off.
The Creditor’s interactions with Dandalus were interesting, but I really didn’t like how things turned out with him. Wolfrun was an interesting character and I would have liked to see more of him.
There were some good action scenes in this book and some tense moments that did manage to keep me reading. I did think that some parts of the book could have been expanded upon, though, and I’m not sure I’ll be reading the other books in this series any time soon.
Ink of Blood 