(This review may contain spoilers).
I have to be honest and say I was quite disappointed in this book. I really liked the front cover and the blurb immediately piqued my attention. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of reincarnation.
A lot of the book was beautifully written, but the almost poetic feel to it made it come across as very surreal. In many ways, it was unclear as to whether Denis was looking back on his past, or telling the events as they happened.
While I did feel a lot of sympathy for M, I felt there was a lot of telling rather than showing and I didn’t really see much of M’s apparent maturity and her ‘old soul’, though that seemed to be explained away when the book switched over to M’s POV at the end.
The book did make it fairly clear what was going to happen and despite the hints things might be different this time around, by the end of the third part, I wasn’t really surprised by what happened. And I would have liked to see a bit more expansion of Waters and how Enoch fit in with the two main characters. Again, there was too much telling rather than showing. And even with the romance that cropped up, that didn’t really feel real, as too much time was glossed over and I felt there were a lot of hints dropped that weren’t then expanded upon.
I did feel a lot of emotion during Denis’ account of his relationship with both his father and his mother and the sense that he’d run out of time with both was very real. In many ways, I would have liked to see more focus on his relationship with his parents, which were also glossed over quite a bit more.
I have to say, I did find the ending a little bit weird. It possibly would have been less so if it hadn’t been made completely clear what M and Denis’ past relationships in their previous lives ha been like.
I would have liked a lot more showing rather than telling, especially in regards to things like Denis’ mother stating that M was like a wife and a mother. I think this book would have been better expanded upon, perhaps with earlier parts indicating more of the past lives and the kind of cycle the three of them were bound in.
Ink of Blood 