Ink of Blood

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I really liked the blurb of this book, as well as the front cover. While the plot wasn’t an entirely unique one, I thought it was an interesting twist on the ‘person/group of people find themselves in another world’.

I did think it was interesting to see the characters and how capable they were when they were playing the game. While I’ve never LARP-ed myself, I didn’t have any problem picturing the teams in my mind. What I didn’t like, however, was the listing off of the characters… and that I had no idea what any of them looked like, which made it difficult to differentiate between them at times.

While it was good to see that the characters had different names, it would have been good to see more explanations as to why some of them were chosen.

I did feel that the plot was very simplistic in places. There was a lot of potential, but I felt that the connections between many of the characters weren’t given the time to develop. I felt that Raina especially wasn’t given much of a personality outside of her crush on Bohair… and speaking of Bohair, I actually didn’t like him very much by the end of the book. At the same time, I thought that Piper’s changed feelings towards Bohair were random and not foreshadowed at all.

There were some quite good elements in this book, especially where the fight scenes were concerned. However, I found it very difficult to believe the characters from modern-day Earth could defeat warriors apparently training for actual fighting in a fantasy world. I was also disappointed not to see much of a culture shock… or for the characters to have any sort of reaction to actually having to kill people.

I would have liked to see more of the world and the interactions expanded upon, rather than glossed over. I found it very difficult to care about the characters who were wounded, because I hadn’t connected emotionally to them.

As it stands, I don’t think I’ll read a sequel to this book, since I found it difficult to connect to the characters… but I would read one if it was changed and expanded upon, allowing me to connect to the characters and care about them.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I’d ideally give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. I was drawn into the storyline, but I did have a lot of confusion while I was reading it. In many ways, I felt like I was being thrown into the middle of a plot… and it took a while before I could figure out exactly what was going on with all of the characters.

While it was interesting to see the different characters and how their storylines came together, it did seem a bit disjointed at first. I did think Marcus was an intriguing character, though I would have liked a bit more detail about his history. I was confused about just why Marcus and his knight had magic, though… and although Shyla was an interesting character during her first appearance, I did kind of go off her quite a bit when the storyline switched to her perspective.

There were a lot of things in the book that I felt weren’t expanded. While some of the characters’ motivations were explored, there were too many of them for me to be able to get to know the secondary characters very well.

I thought this book was quite short and while it was easy to read, I do think it could have done with being longer. There were some elements of foreshadowing I felt could have been utilised that weren’t.

I did find it interesting to see the different kinds of magic and I would have liked to know a bit more about how it all worked. I really didn’t like the witch who Kenthal went to see… but I found it hard to care much about the queen, especially given what was revealed later on.

There were some good elements of tension in this book and towards the end, there was a lot of good action and fighting, although I found it hard to care about many of the characters who died, since I couldn’t get to know many of them.

I’m not sure I’d read a sequel to this book, though I might read other books by this same author in the future, depending on the plotline. I wouldn’t read this book again, I have to say.