Finished
A Trade of Blood (Ana and Din series 3) by RJ Bennett and at the end I was fairly disappointed (I highly dislike ideological rants - here against the consumption of meat by humans, particularly beef, that disturb the narrative flow and I am not even a "meat person", but adding a weak mystery with an obvious villain that somehow Ana manages to miss was too much)- I read it for now, but I will start listening soon once I finish my current audiobook and hopefully the superb narrator will add enough to raise my opinion of the book; definitely want more in the series as the universe and characters are still fascinating;
My Goodreads review of the moment below:
Will write more after listening to the audio but for now will say that while the novel was still gripping and hard to put down, it was not quite at the level of the first two for three reasons - first it was fairly obvious from almost the first encounter who the villain was (who benefits is probably the first question to ask) and it was shocking to see Ana not making said person prime suspect - second the ideological stance of the author explained at length at the end of the book makes this book almost a manifest rather than a novel being very strident in places; third the horror motives while present in the first two novels, were grotesque here and almost broke my suspension of disbelief on occasion.
Also the characters were generally less interesting overall as it was cool to see Din sister at first, but then it almost looked like the author didn't quite know what to do with her. Also way too many convenient coincidences and some stuff about how the imperial specialization works didn't quite add up.
Overall - some interesting stuff, but a lame mystery and way too much ranting. Hopefully, the narration will add enough to raise my opinion and the interesting bits (the history, the new imperial types) will remain with me more than the anti-beef screeds and the weak storyline
