Ink of Blood

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I was pretty intrigued to read this book and find out about Victor’s past. I liked the scenes with Abraham. I was drawn into his storyline and could empathise with him really easily. It was interesting to see how he became a Lighteater.

I also liked seeing Victor as a child and his relationship with the people in the village he grew up in. It was nice to learn more about the history of their world, too.

I have to say, though, I was a little disappointed. I felt that this book could have been expanded quite a bit. Although Victor as a child was quite cute, I didn’t feel that the evolution of his character to the dark, angry person was really shown.

Weston is still not really shown in a good light and I’m disappointed that he still seems like a jerk, even though he’s supposed to be really good friends with Victor. I did like seeing some of the other characters, especially Kamm’s relationship with him.

I did think there was a bit too much info-dumping in this book. There were scenes that were delivered as really quick flashbacks, that I felt should have taken place earlier and been further expanded.

I can’t really give this book more than three stars – it did have that whole ‘instant connection’ thing that I’m not a fan of. Although my opinion of this book is more negative than positive, I still enjoy the series… but this book would have been better if it had been expanded and less, ‘His friend Dante… Dante was…’

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I was actually a bit surprised by how short this book was. It was only part one, but it was still a bit of a surprise. Despite that, though, there was definitely a lot of action in this book.

Despite the dual first-person perspectives I’ve developed a strong dislike for (and I hesitate to admit this), I actually felt it worked in this particular instance, given the two different plots that were going on. I still would have preferred two limited third person POVs, though. It got a bit irritating how, from Victor’s perspective, it was all, ‘Molly, Molly, Molly,’ even during the action scenes.

Conversely, I actually preferred Molly’s perspective, because it was nice to see her outside of her relationship with Victor. It was interesting to see how much the two societies differed, but I didn’t think there was much logic to Molly’s flashes of memory. Very little actually seemed triggered by something, which I would have thought worked better. And the times I thought something should trigger a memory, it didn’t.

I did wonder a bit about Kamm in the book. I still didn’t particularly like him as a character, but it would be nice to see him have a chance of redemption. I went back to completely disliking the Prophet, though.

I felt the supporting characters were more defined in Molly’s storyline. In Victor’s, they didn’t seem quite as substantial.

There were a number of things that did intrigue me enough to read part two. I’m enjoying seeing this world and its characters so far.

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

Having read part one, I was fairly happy to read part two. Whereas part one was, I felt, more character-driven, this book had a bit more action in it… though there was still a lot about the characters in this, too.

In this part, I felt there was much more depth to Molly. I’m not sure I could say she grew as a character, because I think there was still a lot of immaturity to her, but there was a lot of action as well as her just reacting.

One of the things about this part that I felt worked really well was the fact that Victor pushed Molly in the training. Not enough to be cruel to her, but enough because he wanted to make sure she was safe… even if she was angry with him for it.

I really liked seeing more of Neep in this part and I particularly liked the fact that I learned more about Leena. I wavered quite a bit in how I felt about her during the course of the book, but by the end, I liked her more than I thought I would.

I’m not really sure that the people can claim the gene for violence was bred out of them, considering that a lot of them do seem prepared to train for battle and I’m fairly sure a lot of them aren’t Motley.

I felt a bit more sympathy towards the Prophet in this book. I’m not entirely sure about him, but he also had a bit more depth here.

There were some really quite emotional scenes in this book and even though there were times I didn’t agree with Molly, I could at least understand where she was coming from most of the time. I did enjoy reading this book and it’s interesting to see the contrasts between the two different worlds.

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I did read book one in this series a while back, but I haven’t revisited the world until now. I found myself quickly pulled back into the storyline, though. I don’t remember if I was completely sold on the romance between Victor and Molly in book one, but I liked it much better in this book… though I felt that Victor was much more concerned with being honest with Molly’s family than she was.

It was good to see some of the characters I recognised from book one, though I felt this book was quite a bit darker than the previous. There were a lot of emotional scenes in this that really affected me… and I found myself really empathising with the characters at times.

I didn’t really like the fact that Molly was so obsessed with Victor, to the point where she seemed to be neglecting everything else. I did feel that the author did a good job of showing how she was affected by what had happened to her, though. I could really understand how she was feeling after certain things had happened and I felt like she reacted realistically.

I really hated Darlene as a character. I loved seeing Pandora in the book, too. I would have liked to see more of Molly’s relationship with Nick. There were some quite sweet moments between them.

I didn’t like Weston all that much in this book. It was good to see more of the world and to see Molly learning how to work the flying vehicle. It was also good to see how technologically advanced the other world was, while still having a lot of differences to Molly’s world.

I have part two on my Kindle and will be reading that. I also have two other books set in this world that I’m quite looking forward to reading.