(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I did find this book to be quite an intriguing read. Although I wasn’t especially keen on Silver having something that made her stand out so much, since it raised something of a red flag to me, I was able to connect emotionally to her as a character and I did care about what was happening to her.
While it was good to get bits and pieces of the world Silver and the other characters were a part of, I felt that many of the secondary characters… in particular quite a few of the fellow Offerings… weren’t really expanded or developed. I would have liked to know more than just a few of them, as I didn’t actually care about some of them enough that, when something happened, it didn’t affect me emotionally.
It was interesting to get some details of life in the castle and how everyone had to keep their heads down. The entire time in the castle put me completely on edge… but given there was very little detail about the King before Silver and the other characters went to the castle, I didn’t find his behaviour as a shock due to having envisioned him as a completely different person to who it turned out he was.
I actually found Rush to be quite an interesting character and I would have liked to see more of him… as well as the other Offerings. I was a bit disappointed that so much time was glossed over, as I didn’t get a chance to learn all that much about Imrin… or believe in the feelings the two of them apparently had for each other.
There were a lot of good elements of tension and I did feel a lot of sympathy for the Offerings. I did feel there were some links to the Hunger Games… but although there were scenes that reminded me of those books, I thought that the storyline was unique enough to keep me reading throughout and although I couldn’t form emotional connections to most of the secondary characters, it was easy to care about Silver… and what might happen to her family while she’s forced to live in the castle.
I do have the second and third books on my Kindle… which is good, because I’m looking forward to reading to the end and finding out what will happen to the characters.
Ink of Blood 