Review by Eli Adelholm
I really did not know what I was expecting when I requested this book from Netgalley – it certainly was not what I expected – but I loved it! I do have to admit I am a bit out of my comfort zone with this one. It has fantasy elements (there’s a wizard and all!) but truly it has more of a horror feel about it.
Set in present
day England, it starts out very innocently with a fat man reading a book on a
bench – and then it gets a whole lot of crazy.
The Element of
Surprise
Masters of
Blood and Bone, which is scheduled for publishing on February 3rd
2015, is my first encounter with author Craig Saunders and not a bad one at
that. He writes in a very light and fluid style, each sentence leading up to
the next, building suspense and drama just by the use of wording and phrasing.
This book is
borne by the element of surprise. Aristotle once wrote that “the secret to
humour is surprise”, and that is probably why this was such a fun read in
addition to being a completely unpredictable journey. For me, every twist and
turn in this book took me by surprise, throwing me off my feet. I didn’t know
what to expect when I dived into it, and I never got that sense of knowing what
the hell was going on until the very last chapter.
That is what I
enjoyed most about the book; you had to think about it. It is not a straightforward
story, where everything is directly explained. Some things you have to figure
out for yourself.
A Cast of
Crazy Characters
I especially
loved the character Holland, who is a bit of an unusual hero; a fat man,
revelling in his destructive lifestyle, a mortal who has a calm much greater
than any of the immortals he is up against. He is a man who simply doesn't give
a fuck.
“A man stands
before a God, stripped bare, he’s either comfortable with himself or he can try
for modest. Holland didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t modest. He was just cold.”
There is no
doubt that the real strength of this book is in the characters. It is a small
but intriguing cast; a fat mortal man, his immortal daughter, a rather stupid
God, an insane wizard and a most unusual book. It does make for one of the most
curious reads I have ever experienced.
A Humorous
Horror Story?
I think my
main problem with Masters of Blood and Bone was that it lacked the feeling of
consequence. A giant war was waged across the world and whole nations were
eradicated in a mad God’s quest. And yet, at no point do we get a feeling of
exactly how bad it is.
It is more of
a humorous read than a hardcore horror story. Which is both a quality and a
fault. I loved the humour, but I am not sure how well it worked in the context
of the story. It had a strangely happy ending for such a dire story.
Also, I thought that sometimes the horror parts were not really horrifying enough. There were
some really macabre moments in there, but there were also times where things
got taken a little too lightly. Especially when it came to Holland; his
indestructible calm did seem a bit too exaggerated at times. He was the mortal
one after all, yet he seemed to take things almost indifferently at times.
Source: Acquired as an Advance Review Copy through Netgalley.
IBR rating: ★★★
Recommendation: This might not be the book of the year, but I would
still recommend it to anyone up for a quick and interesting read full of
surprises.
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