Blood Victory

Visceral. That is probably the singular best word I can think of to describe this book.

Once again, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK WITHOUT READING BONE MUSIC AND BLOOD ECHO FIRST. They are absolutely serial (see what I did there?) and build on each other - you can follow along with the story here easily enough without reading those two first, but major revelations from each are openly discussed here and will thus be major spoilers.

That dispensed with, back to “visceral”. I gotta admit, my sense of dread of what Charley is encountering in this book made me walk away from it at several points. I knew I was always coming back, because this was an ARC, but I had to take a break because the dread was just too much. Fortunately Rice resolves those issues rather quickly in most cases, instead spending time seemingly trying to build up just such a level of dread before releasing the tension and moving on. In the back half of the book, we get much more exposition of the motivations of the killers of this mission, and one of the more grisly uses of Charley's super strength we've seen so far.

All told an excellent addition to the series, and one that leaves the reader ready for the next book. Very much recommended.