A review by ghostmuppet
Hope and Red, by Jon Skovron
3.0
I saw this in the Gemmell Awards ballot, and liked the cover (yes, never judge a book by its cover). It was also on offer from Amazon with Audible Narration. So, it was purchased.
This is the story of two people, Hope and Red. They are both orphaned at an early age, but develop in different ways. Hope is a warrior monk, while Red is a thief. The book starts with their early lives, explains how bad it was and why they went on different paths. It then skips a number of years when they are teenagers and the story starts off then. The early years does last a while, and is still enjoyable to read.
This is a set up for more books - we know there will be three. We are introduced to the 'bad guys' in the form of Biomancers - nasty people who experiment on the living by infecting them with nasty biological war weapons.
The characters themselves are enjoyable and i ended up rooting for them. I liked how the story wove around certain expectations, always making me think what will happen next. OK, some of it was a little predictable, but we were introduced to some characters that i thought would be main stays, only to be dropped for a while then introduced again.
I would say this is a solid 3 star book. There was nothing that broke it to a 4 star for me. There were also a couple of annoying elements (calling people Wags - which to me means Wife and Girlfriends), and a fair amount of swearing (i am not offend by it, i just didn't see the reason for the specific phrase).
All in all, an enjoyable book and one in which i will continue with reading.
This is the story of two people, Hope and Red. They are both orphaned at an early age, but develop in different ways. Hope is a warrior monk, while Red is a thief. The book starts with their early lives, explains how bad it was and why they went on different paths. It then skips a number of years when they are teenagers and the story starts off then. The early years does last a while, and is still enjoyable to read.
This is a set up for more books - we know there will be three. We are introduced to the 'bad guys' in the form of Biomancers - nasty people who experiment on the living by infecting them with nasty biological war weapons.
The characters themselves are enjoyable and i ended up rooting for them. I liked how the story wove around certain expectations, always making me think what will happen next. OK, some of it was a little predictable, but we were introduced to some characters that i thought would be main stays, only to be dropped for a while then introduced again.
I would say this is a solid 3 star book. There was nothing that broke it to a 4 star for me. There were also a couple of annoying elements (calling people Wags - which to me means Wife and Girlfriends), and a fair amount of swearing (i am not offend by it, i just didn't see the reason for the specific phrase).
All in all, an enjoyable book and one in which i will continue with reading.