(This review may contain spoilers).
When I first read the blurb of this book, I found it a really intriguing idea. But I felt like I was thrown into the middle of a storyline and had even less knowledge of Bayne than Bayne even had of himself.
I felt it was a pity this book wasn’t longer, as there were hints of a strong fantasy world with its own mythology. Bayne was an interesting character, as he was much darker than most fantasy heroes I read about. At the same time, I couldn’t really get to know him. It was difficult to form a connection to him, as even though he wasn’t born in the conventional way, I had the feeling he was still a blank slate with very few real morals. It could have been interesting to see the journey of Bayne as he became a person outside of the violence that so defined him in his first creation.
It did seem like there were some lessons to be learned during the course of the climb, but I didn’t feel like Bayne really took any of that in. He made decisions and took actions that quite often didn’t have much motivation behind them. It seemed strange that so many people chose to try and kill a man who had killed so many people in return.
The ending of the book was, I felt, quite anticlimactic. While it is the first book in a series, I felt that the main character lacked much depth. He was a different type of main character in this fantasy world, but although he was an active character, he also came across as kind of passive. He reacted when other characters threatened him, but there were very few actions outside of violence that he took. I wouldn’t have called him a neutral character. And by the end of this book, there seemed to be good and evil with very little depth to them. That can be done well sometimes, but not when the ‘evil’ characters have no depth and call themselves evil.
I would be likely to read more books in this series if they were longer and allowed me more than a glimpse into a world that has a lot of potential to it. I would have liked a bit more detail and some more detailed characters.
Ink of Blood 