Early Review – Paper & Blood (Ink & Sigil, Book 2) by Kevin Hearne (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 304 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: August 10, 2021
ASIN : B08N6T74ZK
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Ink & Sigil series
Source: eGalley from Netgalley
Rating: 4/5 stars
“There’s only one Al MacBharrais: Though other Scotsmen may have dramatic mustaches and a taste for fancy cocktails, Al also has a unique talent. He’s a master of ink and sigil magic. In his gifted hands, paper and pen can work wondrous spells.
But Al isn’t quite alone: He is part of a global network of sigil agents who use their powers to protect the world from mischievous gods and strange monsters. So when a fellow agent disappears under sinister circumstances in Australia, Al leaves behind the cozy pubs and cafes of Glasgow and travels to the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria to solve the mystery.
The trail to his colleague begins to pile up with bodies at alarming speed, so Al is grateful his friends have come to help—especially Nadia, his accountant who moonlights as a pit fighter. Together with a whisky-loving hobgoblin known as Buck Foi and the ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, along with his dogs, Oberon and Starbuck, Al and Nadia will face down the wildest wonders Australia—and the supernatural world—can throw at them, and confront a legendary monster not seen in centuries.”
Series Info/Source: This is the second book in The Ink & Sigil series. I got an eGalley of this book to review through NetGalley.com.
Thoughts: We are still spending time with Al and Buck. This time they are called on to check on the disappearance of a fellow Sigil agent and their journey takes them to Australia.
This was a decent read but rambled on at times. There are diversions on paper making and ink making and many other things which I alternately enjoyed and found annoying because they detracted from the main story.
I love the characters and world here. However, this book also contained a few stand alone short stories that were embedded in the main story and these detracted from the overall book because they really pull the reader away from the action and the main storyline. The story that Buck told was particularly painful to get through. This would have been an awesome book if Hearne had said then Buck told the tale of “…” and then the full story itself had been included at the end of the book rather than breaking into intense action scenes to divert the reader.
There is quite a bit of action here and some interesting encounters with various gods. It was fun to see Atticus and Oberon again; they are in a good portion of this book. However, this didn’t seem to really tie in to a larger story and was just a quick jaunt to help out some fellow Sigil agents.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this and would recommend it. It’s humorous and entertaining and has some good mythology and unique characters in it. I do hope we see tighter writing in the next book; vast portions of this book wandered off onto side stories or spent copious amounts of time discussing things like paper making. This book wasn’t as exciting and thrilling to me as the first in this series but I do plan to continue on with the series.
