Book Review: Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger

Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really I would rate this book more 3.5 to 3.75 stars, but since I can't do partial stars I have rounded up. This was one of those time where I try to mix up what I'm reading. Sometimes it pays off and I find something that I like, and sometimes it doesn't. This was one of the times where it didn't pay off.

Now I wouldn't say that I disliked this book, but I wouldn't go as far to say that I liked it either. I was really intrigued by the books description, and I think I expected to get something different to what I actually got. I thought this book would play out more along the lines of a a crime novel, discovering the facts of the case/finding new facts, that would reveal more of the story as you went along, with the Psychological and supernatural element on top. I personally feel that there was very little progression throughout this book. It was as though I had gotten three quarters of the way through and yet didn't really know anymore about what was going on than I did at the start. In my opinion this book just kept adding to the list of questions without really answering them.

I think that the individual characters were quite well written, with there being subtle changes in the writing to reflect the personality of the different characters. The way that that the author incorporated the character's memories into the main body of writing was interesting, and 9 times out of 10 worked well and wasn't confusing. There were a couple of times were it wasn't immediately obvious that they were remembering something, but could quickly catch up. The overall writing style was good and had a good flow to it, and the characters were believable. There was plenty of description that made it easy to build a clear image in your mind of what the Hollows look like and to get a real feel for this fictional place.

I think that this book had a really interesting concept, but the way it was executed didn't work for me. I personally would have liked a bit more of a progressive plot and maybe even have the relationships between the characters build on a bit more as I feel this was an element that felt a little neglected. I think that this type of story line/plot would have worked better it there was more going on with the characters.

Overall this wasn't a bad book, I just don't think that it was the book for me.


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