I'd wanted to read this for a long time and am so glad that I finally got round to it. The writing is excellent, really thought-provoking. The characters are odd but interesting. Alison is a medium and clairvoyant, making her living by using her gifts. She teams up with Colette, a rather sad, organised lady who doesn't seem to know what to believe, who works as her manager/assistant. I've seen the characters described as unlikeable in other reviews, but I thought that they both earned the sympathy of the reader (they got mine, anyway). There's something very real about this book - I don't mean the ghosts, I mean the way it presents life. The ending is very telling in that respect, but I don't want to give it away so I'll say no more!
I enjoyed this - it's very light reading, a bit like Twilight but with adult content. It's got vampires, romance and a blonde heroine who reads minds. Not everyone is going to appreciate the writing style, but I just let myself believe that the style reflected the heroine (it's written in the first person), and it was fine. I'd picked it up cheap, having heard a little about the TV series and wanting to know more. Trouble is, now I want to read them all before the series comes on a channel I can watch!
I've heard that this Abercrombie fellow is going to be one of the greats, one of those fantasy authors who'll be remembered as a classic of the genre. Having read this book, I can believe it. It's powerful stuff. There were moments when I thought that there was a tad too much sex, swearing, violence and gore - but then we live in a world with too much sex, swearing, violence and gore. Our world can be downright nasty, and the fantasy world of this novel reflects that very well. The author doesn't shrink from the darker side of people, and his writing is the truer for it. There's plenty of dark humour too though, to keep it light, and characters that are almost Dickensian they're so absurd. This is a shocking, masculine fantasy and yet - I liked it.
