Ink of Blood

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

Although this book did hit one of my pet peeves in the switching between first and third person, I did find this book to be an entertaining read. It drew me in and I liked the fact that most of the characters had darker sides to them and that I had the opportunity to learn more about their pasts.

There were a lot of really disturbing scenes in this book. Larque especially was a really hard character to see any redeeming qualities to… and although the majority of the troll characters were really disturbing, I liked the fact that not all of them were bad. And I did feel a lot of sympathy for Hhaak. While most of the romances in the book didn’t seem to be explored in the way they could have been, I didn’t find them irritating… and despite there being a lot of characters, I was able to get to know most of them.

I liked seeing Fane’s relationship with his father and brother… and also his friendship with Jink. It was interesting to see that there was a lot of tension between Jink and Kael, even though Fane was obviously really close to both of them.

I didn’t really like the fact that the book slipped between past and present tense… I thought that it would have been better for it to just stay in the past tense.

I didn’t like Fith as a character. I didn’t think he gave Fane all of the skills he needed to go to Skur. I was also interested in the Shadowland… though I would have liked to see more details of the place. I was confused about whether it was another realm or something else.

I did like the fact that Kael’s relationship with Alyn was allowed to develop and I thought both of them were really sweet while interacting with Elva.

I did think that the descriptions in the book came across really well. I was able to picture a lot of the characters and the events in my mind. I didn’t really like the glossing over of time, though… I was confused about how much time had passed.

I probably would read the sequel to this book at some point in the future. I’d like to see more of Elva and the people she interacts with.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I’d really give this book 2.5 stars out of 5. I really liked the concept… but to be honest, I found the book really hard to read. The beginning was intriguing and I had a lot of sympathy for Kahl. I liked seeing his relationship with Mirra and his adopted mother’s other son… but with the sudden jump forward in time, I found it really hard to reconcile the Kahl from later with the one at the beginning. I felt like I kept being beaten over the head with the fact that he was a really awful person… but from the sounds of it, his previous family forgot about him; and he wasn’t exactly treated well when they were seeking protection.

I found it very hard to care about most of the characters in this book. I felt that there was a lot of telling rather than showing. It was very hard to differentiate between the different characters when, most of the time, they were just listed off.

I was intrigued by the mythology about the world, but there seemed to be little in the way of conflict. It was made quite clear who the bad guys were and I felt that the characters seemed like vastly different people depending on the area of the book.

I think this book could have done with being expanded upon and having more of Kahl’s childhood and growing up shown. I wasn’t rooting for any of the characters and I actually felt very close to giving up on this book. I felt it moved slowly and although there were some instances of action, those were few and far between… and not very effective, especially when I didn’t get a chance to experience that action through the characters; only through someone else watching them. There were too many POVs that made it difficult to figure out exactly what was going on.

Quite apart from having a strong dislike of love triangles, I felt that the one in this didn’t work at all, since I couldn’t see any chemistry between the characters. As it stands, I won’t be reading the next book/s in this series.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I’d give this book 3.5 stars out of 5, ideally. It was good to see Lena and her friends appear again, but I did think that she was a bit too obsessed with getting back to see her boyfriend. While it was clear she missed him, I felt that she considered seeing him more important than her family members. (Not so much her dad… but definitely her mom and ‘adopted’ family members).

I really liked seeing Wilma again in this book. It was good to see her not taking nonsense from anyone… and yet also wanting to protect Lena and keep her safe. I also liked seeing Lena’s friendship with Belva… and how Belva and Farren were clearly romantically interested in each other. I also liked the fact that there were things about Belva that were special, instead of it just being about Lena.

It was good to see Lena’s feelings towards her past self and I felt the author captured her resentment/jealousy really well. Although not an attractive trait, it did help her to appear more human and enabled me to become more sympathetic towards her. I also liked being able to meet Winston and see how good he was… and the fact that he didn’t match Lena’s mental image of him at all was amusing and, I felt, really worked for the story.

I wasn’t especially fond of the fact that there were two occasions where the first person perspective slipped into third. I felt that was unnecessary and revealed plot twists earlier to myself as a reader, which made them lose their effectiveness.

I liked being able to see more of Arcas and the fact that the inhabitants of the world weren’t the scary creatures they came across as in the previous book. I would have liked the opportunity to get to know some of the other characters more, although I did think that Lena went through a good character journey through the course of this book.

I don’t know if I’d read book three as it stands. This was entertaining and easy to read… but there were a few issues I would like to see addressed.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I found this book to be an intriguing fantasy read. At first, I didn’t know how the different storylines all fit together… and I’m still not sure how the very first chapter fit in with everything, although it was intriguing and did a good job of drawing me into the book and making me want to learn more.

It was good to see quite a lot of this world and the different cultures there were, though there were several occasions where the story skipped over scenes that were probably important that I felt should have been expanded.

I liked seeing Sume’s relationship with her nephew and it was sweet to imagine them as children playing together. Although I did feel some sympathy for Hana, after losing Oji and any money from his work, I didn’t much like her by the end of the book. There wasn’t enough about her to make her a more sympathetic character.

I didn’t like the fact that there were several chapters that slipped into present tense. I felt that was unnecessary and caused me to keep slipping out of the storyline.

I really liked Kefier’s character. I found him likable and sympathetic… and it was good to see that there was a lot more depth to him as the storyline went on. I did find Ylis an interesting character, though the switching between different POVs did confuse me, since it wasn’t always clear whose head I ended up in.

It was good to learn more about the history/mythology in this book and how it came up during the present time of the book. I did think that Dai was less of a sympathetic character. The first thing with Ylis, I could understand… later on, he just seemed to make even worse choices.

There were some quite creepy moments in this book and some very disturbing imagery. I thought it was interesting to see just how much was going on and that there seemed to be a lot of layers to this book and world. In the future, I’d like to read the next two books in this trilogy.