Ink of Blood

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

Even though I only know a bit about Edgar Allen Poe’s poems, I was immediately struck by the blurb of this book. I thought it sounded particularly intriguing and although I was a little confused by the constant switching between POV characters (I forgot whose past I knew and whose I didn’t between Face and King, for instance), I did find it really easy to empathise with a lot of the characters.

I thought there were a lot of good elements of foreshadowing in this book, even though I did feel there were a couple of instances where things were only revealed when they became relevant.

I really liked seeing the problems between Kevin and Seth and I found Seth a character who was really easy to care about. I would have liked to see a bit more development in the relationship between Kevin and Veronica, though.

I thought it was good to have the opportunity to see some of the scenes from Warren’s perspective later on, but I did feel that the start of the story did give away a lot of what could have been a surprise.

I didn’t really like the gang members for most of the book, even though it was good to see that a lot of them were well-developed. By the end of the book, I did actually like Face as a character. I thought his abilities were interesting and I especially liked his interactions with Seth. I thought that was the most interesting relationship in the book. I would have liked to see a bit more of Seth trying to deal with what had happened to his father, but it was good to see some of the scenes from his point of view.

I did think there were some really good descriptions in this book and the mental images from the gang members being killed made me cringe, though it was interesting to see the use of the poems in the deaths.

There was a lot of tension in this book that did manage to keep me reading throughout. I would definitely be interested in seeing more of the characters and also in reading more books by this author in the future.