Book Review: Written in Red (The Others #1)

 

Written in Red

3/5

Anne Bishop

I'm bored so I'm doing re-reads. I don't feel like enough new material has been released this year so I'm really just out here spending hours trying to figure out what to read. Anyways, I read this one initially a couple of years ago and my rating kind of stands. I remember it getting better, but this one is just a little weird. I don't think that I could ever explain this to someone who hadn't read it because I don't think they would understand the intricacies of the universe and they would just find it super strange. 

Meg is a cassandra sangue, prophecies are in her blood and if she cuts her skin then those prophecies emerge. So that's a warning if any kind of cutting is your trigger, it does happen here pretty frequently as it is pretty integral to the plot. That being said, I think that it's well-established that it's an addiction and that she's trying to control it. I think it's an original idea, I've never seen anything like it before and it kind of stuck with me as something specific to this series even years after reading it. 

I think that the names for things could be a little more original. This is an adult book and yet we're calling people Bigwig and there's a place called Sparkletown. It's like she decided to use the same names for everything but decided to change them slightly by dumbing them down. It's kind of reflective of the main character, one of her traits as a cassandra sangue is her "innocence" that exists to protect her from the intensity of prophecy. I wish that could be explained a little more because it feels like a cop out. 

All in all, it's a pretty interesting read. Re-reading it is fun but just makes me remember how angry I was when Bishop decided to continue the series away from Meg and Simon. I think that they're great characters that really reflect the shortcomings of one another and that they kind of got abandoned. Their build-up in this one is good though.