Blood For Love

Title: Blood For Love
Author: Chris M. Finklestein


Ratings

Score: 9/10
How likely I am to read the next in the Series: I would love to read a sequel, and I hope Finklestein writes one.

Review

I have to say this book was not at all what I was expecting. It's about a planet where love is forbidden - and so I expected it to be a romance. It's not about that. It's about a resistance movement trying to survive in what seems to be a destructive government. It's called the Nation of Vengeance. Now I don't like the name, I can't imagine a government calling themselves that, but it is pretty apt.

So there's an enemy, which all good novels tend to have, and there's good guys: Jan, Martha, Rebecca... etc. These are good characters, altohugh I wouldn't say they are outstanding, they changed too fast after they went to a certain school, and there was one character, Rachael, who I felt was underdeveloped. But the character that reallys stood out to me was Grisvolt...

He was somewhere between the clear cut "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys", although he was clearly a good person. I found the fact that a lot of the time he was torn between emotions he knew he shouldn't have endeared him to me more. I was quite impressed with his character.

There was a couple of things about the text itself that I didn't really like. The first was the use of brackets. I tend to prefer that authors avoid the use of brackets in dialogue and narrative. And although Finklestein didn't do it that often, there are two instances where I felt that really they didn't need to be used, and that stick with me. The first is "in the Nation of Vengeance, (the NOV.)" and the second is "They were dressed in refined black ela robes, (very expensive,) and there were seven of them.". In both cases I feel that it could have been done without a bracketed term. But it's not a huge issue, just a personal issue with parentheses.

There were a couple of spelling mistakes in the text as well, but very few, and this didn't cause a real problem. Although one was quite interesting. On the first page of chapter nine there is a word used. the sentence is: "He didn't return her "goodnight" gniteerg." I'm not sure if this is a mistake, I know my word processor has sometimes made me write backwards. But I like to think the author just decided that goodnight was the opposite of a greeting and decided to use it backwards.

I feel like I haven't stressed anything particularly good about the novel, despite giving it 9/10. However, the little I described above is all that I found wrong with it. The plot was really good, the society was original, and some of the more technical ideas were fascinating to read about. The novel itself combines two genres seamlessly, Science Fiction is the backdrop for what could easily be a work literary fiction. There's no space battles, or even any advanced technology. It's just an alien species that essentially parallel our own, but taken to an extreme (as many alien species in SF do). But it combines it in a way that is easy to accept as just Sci-Fi.There is even some religous fiction thrown in there - albeit disguised as a metaphor about dragons. But it's seamless with the story, and the story isn't about the religion, so it's not intrusive at all.

Overall, I think Finklesteins writing works very well. I enjoyed reading it, and would love to see more work by this author. The D'otian race is not particularly unique, as there are many lizard humanoids, however their culture and society IS original, and fascinating to read about. The characters sometimes do things unrealistically, but this happens infrequently and to be honest it's not that big a problem. I really enjoyed this novel, I couldn't put it down and I would love to see more from this author.

More Information

Main Protagonist(s): 1 male, 2 female
Main Antagonist(s): Government
Main Relationships: Heterosexual
Genre: Science Fiction, Modern Literature, Religious Fiction
Brief Synopsis:

This is the story of Jan, a gifted male D'otian living on a violent, predatory planet. His mother Martha is part of a love-preservation network, outlawed by a world in which love is punished by DeathBT.  

-Amazon

ISBN: 978-0615454474
Amazon Link: UK | US (Kindle Edition only in UK)
Pages: 346
Published: 3rd April 2011
Publisher: Crave Books