(This review may contain spoilers).
I’d probably give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. I enjoyed reading it and it was relatively quick to read…but I felt like there were previous books in this series that were being referenced. There were a lot of moments of telling rather than showing when it came to Ash’s and Ryker’s past relationship and Ryker’s previous relationship with Katie.
I did think the idea of the anomalies was a really interesting one and it was pretty intriguing to see the attraction between the two main characters and the conflicts caused on Ryker’s side, at least, about whether or not the feelings were real.
I felt this book would have been better off without the romance, especially considering there were scenes where two very intelligent characters made some pretty poor choices. I found myself empathising and relating better to Ash in the book than Ryker, as I didn’t really feel like Ryker cared that much about Ash until later on.
There was a lot going on in this book and I would have liked to see more of the different anomalies and their relationships with each other. It would have been good to get a bit more background on Ash and how she was the first female anomaly to exist. I wasn’t very clear on exactly how she’d survived the testing and I felt there was some emphasis on making her special, rather than an interesting character with strengths and weaknesses.
It was good to see Ryker and Ash have to work together on figuring out who they could trust, but I really wasn’t sure how far anomalies went in the world. I would have liked more details about some of the different planets that existed in this world.
While this book wasn’t a short one, I felt the storyline was quite condensed. I didn’t really see much outside of the main storyline and the secondary characters who cropped up didn’t seem to have much of a role outside of when they were needed for the plot – no lives outside of it, so they didn’t really feel like real people I could care about.
That having been said, this book was easy to read and the storyline was engaging enough to keep me reading, with a real conflict between the boy/girl dynamic. I’d likely be willing to read the next book/s in this series at some point in the future.
Ink of Blood 