Ink of Blood

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I liked the blurb of this book… and the cover was suitably creepy, one that I felt fit in really well with the plot of the story.

I found the world really easy to follow and although apocalyptic scenarios are quite a common theme, I thought this was a fairly unique idea. The Reaper was a really awful creature. Or being. Whatever it was. Its ability to absorb its prey was something that was really creepy during the course of the book. It was pretty awful when it used the forms of those it absorbed to talk to the people who knew its victims.

I really liked Lily as a character, though her personality seemed at odds with the way she acted at her first appearance. I also liked the fact that she bonded so quickly with a cat at the library she’d taken shelter in. I could definitely identify with her need to escape into an imaginary world, due to how awful her reality had become. There were times I felt a lot of sympathy for her in the book.

I did really like Kimi as a character as well. While there was a bit too much telling rather than showing, and a lot of information dumps (her attraction to Derek really didn’t seem to come across as very realistic), I did like her as a character. And her friendship that formed with Lily was particularly sweet.

I thought it was interesting that the soldiers trained dogs to sniff out the infected, though I would have liked a bit more detail about how they knew dogs were able to do that. I did feel like the dogs, especially Kerchak and Spook, were really good characters in their own right. I loved the fast bond Spook formed with Lily.

I really hated Cooper and Kyle in this book. They were characters who didn’t really seem to have any redeeming qualities to them. I did really like Jason and Innie, though. I thought it was sweet to see them together… and they both proved themselves to be resourceful and intelligent.

I did very much enjoy reading this book. I would read more books by this author in the future.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I really did like the blurb of this book. I also really liked the cover. It’s very appealing and I think it does a good job of showing what the book’s about.

I did think that the book seemed really rushed. There was a lot of condensing down of events and an awful lot of skipping over the passage of time in the space of a paragraph.

I liked Anthony as a character, but I didn’t think enough space was given for him to grow as a character. There were very little surprises for me as a reader, since any mystery was stated in the narration.

There were some interesting aspects to the story, such as the whole thing about Adrian giving Anthony his heart. I did find a lot of the events to be quite confusing. I’m not sure I really understood everything that was going on. The main event was obvious… but some of the things, like the flowers, weren’t really explained as well as they could have been.

I was a bit confused about what was going on in the town. There were times I thought that the whole town was corrupted, but by the end, it seemed like it wasn’t.

Although the main characters were fairly well-defined, there were other characters who weren’t shown nearly as much as they could have been. There were relationships between certain characters that were talked about… but not really described.

If this book had been longer, I think it would have been much easier to read and definitely worthy of more than three stars. There were some elements I really liked in this book, such as the former relationship between Adrian and the Devil. Later on, there are some nice scenes involving Pops… but I was disappointed that the interactions between him and Anthony were only summarised at the beginning. I was also confused about the time frame of this book… and there was too much telling rather than showing.

I’d read a sequel to this book if it was expanded upon. The danger the characters were in didn’t really seem that strong… and I think the main problem was with not being as emotionally connected to the characters as I could have been.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

Having read the first book in this trilogy, I was eager to read books two and three as well. While I don’t have book three on my Kindle, I did have this book.

It was easy to find myself in Sybella’s head. I felt the author did a good job of showing Sybella’s voice as being different to Ismae’s. I liked Sybella as much as I did Ismae… though in a different way.

I had a lot of sympathy for Sybella. Her family made my flesh crawl… even Julian, who was apparently kinder, but his ‘kindness’ was actually worse, in many ways.

I liked seeing more of Beast in this book. While there was a lot of repetition in the narration, especially when it came to Beast’s appearance, I found the way their relationship grew and evolved came across really well. Their relationship was really believable and the fact that Sybella’s feelings for Beast weren’t based on his physical appearance was good.

There were quite a few disturbing things about this book. I didn’t really think much of the abbess in this book. The way she treated Sybella was awful… and I was just glad that Sybella still had Ismae, whose friendship was realistic. It was also good to see more of Ismae and Duval.

I liked seeing a bit of Sybella’s sisters, even though I would have liked to see more of how they viewed Sybella. There was absolutely nothing redeemable about D’Albert; he was an awful person and I had a lot of sympathy for the people who had to be around him.

I liked seeing a bit more of the other convents dedicated to the other Saints. And I liked seeing Sybella interacting with the Duchess. I thought her intelligence came across really well and as I learned more of her past, I could definitely see why she seemed to be half-mad during the first book.

The atmosphere in this book came across really well and I do want to read the third book in this trilogy in the future. I’m eager to see what Annith’s book will be like and what the world will be like through her eyes.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I have to say, first of all, that although the blurb of this book sounded really intriguing, the cover doesn’t really fit with the setting of the book. It’s a really nice cover… but it doesn’t seem to fit well with the feel of a historical book.

I was glad to see that the book stuck with one first person perspective. I liked Olivia. She came across as a character who had a lot of depth to her and I found it easy to empathise with her. She was likable and had a lot of depth to her. I also liked reading about how she interacts with the other characters around her.

I do think this book had too much of a modern feel to it. There was too much modern-day slang and swear words used and they kept throwing me out of the book. I was really quite disappointed, as it seemed that, apart from that, a lot of research had gone into building the world in this book. It was the language used that prevented me from being drawn into the book.

I thought Lucia and Marta were interesting characters. I thought it was good that Lucia was the one who was better at working the miracles and not Olivia, since it made Olivia a more well-rounded character.

It was interesting to be able to see more of the different gods and goddesses in those times and it was pretty cool to see the translations for the prayers they used. I liked the hints of some deeper feelings developing between Olivia and Gaius… but there wasn’t really the ‘payoff’ that I was expecting by the end of the book between them.

I thought some of the descriptions came across really well and there were times I was really able to emotionally connect with the characters. I would have liked to see more of Marta in this book… I saw a lot of Lucia and Olivia, but not really much of Marta, which was a shame, since there were hints that she was a character with a lot of depth to her.

I wasn’t sure I liked the ending. In many ways, it seemed rather anticlimactic, considering what went on before. At the same time, I would be interested in reading a sequel to this book and seeing more of Olivia and Gaius especially.

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

(This review may contain spoilers).

I found the blurb of this book to be really intriguing. I was drawn really easily into the world of this book and I liked Madeline as a character.

It was interesting to see the differences in the separate sections. I did find myself getting confused about the whole charges thing… but I had a lot of sympathy for the Rooless. It sounded like they had a raw deal in the world and I could understand the anger many of them had.

I found Madeline to be a character who was easy to empathise with. Although she did have moments of weakness, I found her to be a realistic character. I did think her description was repeated a few too many times in the narration… the fact that she looked different to the other members of the gentry.

I was a bit surprised to find that I actually liked Cara by the end of the book. Even though she didn’t come across as a nice person to begin with (and I’m not sure she’s a nice person even by the end), she was a really intriguing character and I felt she had a lot of depth to her.

I liked Jude a bit more than I did David. I didn’t know what to make of David half the time… and I couldn’t get over the fact that the emotions between him and Madeline seemed to stem from physical attraction, rather than through getting to know each other.

I also liked Charlie as a character. There was something very sweet and innocent about him, in spit of the horrors the Rootless had to deal with.

There were a lot of disturbing scenes, particularly when it came to the details about the radiation poisoning the Rootless were suffering from. I had a lot of sympathy for the characters like Sarah, living in constant agony and with the threat of death hanging over them.

It was interesting to see how other, supposedly ‘good’ characters viewed the Rootless… such as Jamie, with his comments about the vaccine. I found myself getting quite angry with him and also with Madeline’s father.

I would have liked to learn more about the history of the world, but I had a better understanding by the time I finished the book.

I was drawn really easily into this book. It was entertaining and easy to read… and I’m looking forward to reading book two.