Author: Kendare Blake
Year of Publication: 2011
Summary: Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill.
Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
Yet she spares Cas's life.
Review: Okay, firstly for all the things I didn't like about this book, I do have to say parts of it genuinely gave me chills. The author spins a good story, one that kept me turning the pages. Most of the problems I had were with the characters, namely our protagonist, Cas.
Cas came off as extremely arrogant, making a lot of observations of people that never really shone through in the story. A lot of the background characters felt like they should have been fleshed out more - they never lived up to Cas's judgement of them, which by the way, jumped from place to place without even so much as a wink from the ones he was judging. Seriously, it kind of gave me whiplash.
A lot of the dialogue and interactions between the characters felt a little choppy, especially towards the beginning, though towards the end they did get a little better. To be honest, I didn't really give a hoot about most of the people the book centred on, with the exception of Cas's mom, I guess.
Nevertheless, it was still a pretty good read, and I am hoping the issues I had with the characters are resolved in book two, which I am looking forward to reading. Overall, I'd give this book a solid three stars.
Rating: 3/5 stars
★★★✰✰
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