This book definitely ‘stood out’ for me among the crowd. I’d just been to the doctor’s and as a reward to myself, I decided to get a new book. (I actually walked out with two, but that’s another story).
As you can probably tell from the above picture, this book stood out mostly because of the colours. In a sea of black and white spines, the fiery orange/red was different enough to spark my interest. And when I looked at the cover and read the blurb, I very quickly made the decision to buy this book.
While the blurb itself didn’t suggest a book that was entirely unique (pilots able to transform mechanical beasts into warriors; women seen as lesser than men), it was interesting enough to immediately catch my attention. And I read the entire book in two days, so I can 100% say that the book far exceeded my expectations.
Zetian was a character who I was immediately able to connect with. There is a warning about domestic violence and abuse at the beginning of this book and that warning is definitely well-deserved. To give you an example, without going into too much detail, Zetian is subject to her feet being bound. There is some graphic detail, but it does fit a lot of her character, so I think the detail was necessary to understand her character better.
Most of this book completely subverted my expectations. The setup was basically that Zetian planned to kill the pilot who had supposedly murdered her sister, Yang Guang. And their first meeting seemed to follow the basic formula of a young adult romance: where it starts with the main female character hating the main male character, but eventually, they fall in love and the conflicts are resolved and….
And then Zetian kills Yang Guang.
I was honestly shocked. But it made sense, since the book was more about Zetian and her journey. There was actually romance included and even a love triangle, and even though I did find the scenes between Zetian and Yizhi a bit boring, I did like the way the love triangle was handled. Again, my expectations were subverted and it was nice to see the romance handled in a different way.
All in all, this book was one I really enjoyed reading. It was dark and intense to read, though there were some bits of humour that startled a laugh out of me when they came. The characters of Zetian and Shimin were the strongest part of this book and were the ones I cared the most about.
The book did end on a cliffhanger and I’m really hoping a sequel will be written soon. I want to know more about this world, about the characters and what was revealed at the end of the book. There’s so much more to the world that I would love to explore.
Ink of Blood 