Anne Bishop
ISBN: 9780451465276
Continuing a series begun with Written in Red and Murder of Crows. Next book upcoming is Marked in Flesh.
Read April 6, 2015
If you like, you can check out my reviews for the first two books of this series linked above.
In this installation, our focus widens out into the larger world, and the implications of the previous books' action is coming to fruition. The pacing and the characters are better, but there are still odd little gaps here and there that I can't tell if they are purposeful omissions or just jumps because of space/pacing constraints. Odd, but not actively frustrating this time around.
We are starting to build our character list up, and that caused me a few moments of confusion here and there as I occasionally lost track who was where doing what with whom. I will also say that the larger cast list made the losses of characters a lot less impactful for me, because we didn't ever get to spend that much time with them individually.
The ponies were given their required few scenes to remind readers that they exist, but they weren't used to propel the story, which saddened me. Likewise we learn more about a conspiracy and about humans fomenting a rebellion, but the main forward momentum was provided by the struggle to learn about the sweet bloods to try and help them recover and live happily, if not entirely sanely.
I'm honestly ok with that. I like that the series focuses on the Courtyard and the residents, and scenes like the clearing out of the library and the gardening day and picnic are part of what makes this really enjoyable. Sure the world is dark and gruesome, sure there are some awful events and people, but the author really makes sure to counteract that with repeated emphasis on the basic goodness of our heroes and the hope that they are trying to build something good. Very Charles de Lint in seeing cautiously (perhaps rebelliously) optimistic characters persevering through and doing their best together.
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