(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
This book was short and really easy to read. I thought the idea was a really good one and I did like Amanda as a character. It was interesting to see that there were things that struck Amanda as being wrong, though I would have liked to see a bit more of her life before everything changed.
I thought it was interesting to see the flashbacks to Joan of Arc and Lucretia, though I couldn’t really see how their experiences linked in to Amanda’s history. Since the story started so suddenly, there was very little background given, apart from the information dumping.
It would have been good to see Amanda interacting with other people outside of Nick and ‘Totle’. I would have liked to see more of the world. It came across as very self-contained… and while I did have a lot of sympathy towards Amanda as a child, it was actually very difficult to feel that same sympathy towards her when she was older.
I would have liked to see the book made a bit longer. It seemed to be more of a snapshot of the world and one that I would like to see more of. I felt that the world was too detailed just to be confined to one novella.
I did get a bit thrown by how time moved in the book. After the Joan of Arc flashback, the storyline seemed to skip ahead… but there was little to no detail of what had happened there. While it was good to learn more of Nick by the end of the book, I was very confused when he suddenly started going by the name ‘Nicholas’.
I did find there were some really good scenes of tension in this book, especially with the person trying to get into the lecture hall. I was left with quite a lot of questions by the end of the book and it would have been good to see more of her with Patrick… though not really with her other friends. I didn’t really feel that certain actions Amanda took fit in with what I understood of her character, though.
I would have liked to see more of the world and the characters. I felt this book was more of an introduction to the world and I’d like to see more aspects of it.
Ink of Blood 