The cover is eye catching, the description intriguing, however this book fell flat on its face. My overall rating is 3 generous stars out of 5.
Majority of this book, I was completely confused. There were words in Italian that I constantly had to look up so that I could understand what was being said. I had to not only re-read paragraphs, but sometimes ENTIRE chapters just to make sure I understood what was going on. Sometimes it was very hard to distinguish between past and present, and which characters were involved in a particular scene. Sometimes I had to re-read entire sentences simply because the structure sounded off.
So why did I give this book a generous 3 stars? I kept pushing through. The story line is very complex. Taking place in the 1400s, Venice. I love medieval history. The fact that someone attempted the feat of medieval historical fiction, the “birth of the vampire” (though I am still not ENTIRELY sure Tycho is a vampire, because at this time period, vampires did not exist..) is to be applauded. Eventually, each character and story line connected. Once the connection occurred, even though I had to constantly re-read sections, I was intrigued and kept going.
I will eventually read the next two books, as the way it ended left me wondering more what happens to Tycho know that he knows what he was “bred” to do.
If you enjoy books that have multiple plot lines, medieval history, and pages full of deception, corruption and power hungry Venetians, AND, you can get past having to re-read every now and again, I do suggest this book. However, if you don’t like being confused, or re-reading sentences or chapters, then I would say stay clear from this one!
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover? Totally true here…I needed more, with less confusion. To play Devil’s advocate, this author speaks more than one language, and sometimes this book does read like it was translated from Google…
littlebeesreads.com 