Ink of Blood

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

Having read the previous book in this series, I was glad to see that this one picked straight up where the previous one left off.

I liked learning a bit more about how the blood bond worked between Abel and Kane, but I was less than thrilled with the potential love triangle between her, Mikey and Kane. There were some things that made me cringe a bit while reading this book… in particular those scenes that seemed, to me, to be assault at the very least.

It was interesting to see more of Kane’s kind and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the members Crestor had taken. I really didn’t like him at all and he gave me the creeps all through his scenes with Abel and Mikey.

I also liked learning more about the culture generally and even though I didn’t like the love triangle, it was good to learn more about Mikey’s character. I especially liked being able to see that he had a lot of depth to him… and that the problems with addiction were handled and dealt with quite well, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what drove him to drink alcohol.

I did find some of the scenes in this book hard to read and it definitely came across well that Abel was a survivor. I felt that she had as much depth in this book as the first one, even though I didn’t necessarily feel that she should have survived everything she was able to.

I would have liked to be able to see more of the relationship between Kane and Mikey, as all I saw was them being rivals for the same girl. I did also like seeing Ashlynn towards the end of the book and it was nice to see how she was coming more into her own.

Kane was a little scary at certain points in this book, but I did feel a lot of sympathy for him. I really didn’t like Elise… but I thought it was interesting to see how one of their kind was treated and there was a lot of tension at the beginning and towards the end of the book, even though the middle did drag a little.

I definitely intend to read the next book/s in this series at some point in the future.

(This review may contain spoilers).

This is the first time I’ve read a book by John and Carole Barrowman (or even by just one of them) and I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

The idea of being able to control things/do something through singing isn’t a new idea (I’m thinking primarily of Sirens), but I thought this was a very unique twist on the older idea. While I haven’t read the other books set in this world, I found this fairly easy to follow, but I was a bit confused about whether I was in the present or in Remy’s past towards the start of the book.

I did think that the opening scene did a good job of drawing me into the mystery surrounding the Conjurors, even though the bluebottles gave me mental images that left me shuddering.

I did find the main characters to be interesting and that they had a lot of depth… but I would have liked to see more of the background of the Grand Inquisitor and Don Grigori. In this first book in the series, I didn’t feel that they had a lot of depth past being bad guys. I was intrigued by the mention of Don Grigori having possibly have been human once.

I thought it was good to see so much tension throughout the book and it was especially good to have the opportunity to get to know Remy’s aunt and mother and something of their lineage. I was especially curious about Remy’s power to create food and the like and I wondered if it was creating something from nothing… or if the rules worked in a different way than what was immediately obvious.

It was also good to see some of the other abilities come into play, such as Matt and Em being able to travel using paintings, though I would have liked a bit more detail about how their abilities worked. I especially liked it when Em created a car for them to use… and the reaction when it was taken later on.

There were a few humorous moments that worked really well to lighten the story a bit and I especially liked seeing Matt’s interactions with Caravaggio. I was a bit confused about Zach and if he was signing because he was deaf (which was my original assumption), but I liked the glimpses I saw of his relationship with Em. However, I also liked that the sibling relationship was a really important aspect.

When I have more time and money, I definitely intend to read more books in this series and hopefully other books by these authors. This book was fast and easy to read and I’d like to see more of the characters in the future.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

This was, I have to say, a book I had high expectations of that turned out to be a disappointment.

The very first scene was one that started out with a lot of potential, but even by the last quarter of the book, I still had no real idea what the main plot was supposed to be. And the last quarter culminated in an ending that left a very bad taste in my mouth.

I really struggled to form any kind of emotional connection to Jacob. I felt that there was far too much telling rather than showing going on, particularly when it came to his wife and son. They were bland and literally only seemed to appear when they were relevant to Jacob at the time. I had no idea what he thought of them and even when they died, I couldn’t believe that Jacob really grieved for them.

Jacob’s character seemed to go through no real change or evolution. Joseph ben Matthias was actually someone who seemed to go on a better journey than Jacob. I would have preferred seeing him as the main character, as his own struggles made him a more interesting person.

This book read very much like a book of facts, rather than an intriguing historical fiction book. There was too much in the way of information dumping and I lost a lot of my sympathy for Jacob with certain actions he took. What did he care about? Who did he care about? By the end of the book, he’d supposedly lost his faith, but I didn’t feel he really had any to begin with.

I felt this novel suffered from too much exposition and lack of character development. While there was obvious research put into this book, I could have done without having every little bit clubbed over my head.

While the ending could have been an interesting theory, I felt the cat had been let out of the bag far too early on and that it really didn’t add anything to a book I struggled to get through. I feel it might be of interest to conspiracy theorists… but on a personal level, as a reader, it didn’t live up to my expectations and fell very short.