I received a free copy of this book from Booksprout in exchange for my honest review.

The Castle of Nightmares is the second book in the Tales of Crow series by Chris Ward.  It’s seven years after the events of the first book, and Jun, one of the few survivors, has actively been searching for Crow.  Thanks to the crazy people on the internet, he finds Crow in Romania.

I liked this book better than the first.  There was a larger cast of characters with more varied backgrounds than we saw in the first book.  There was also significantly less personal angst, which I appreciated.  I thought the characters interacted well with each other, and the author did a lovely job with his descriptions of the area.  Another mark in the plus column is that I spotted only a few proofreading errors.

Like the first book, this one focused on a different point of view for each chapter.  I’m not sure why, but it didn’t feel quite as choppy this time around.  Lots of bloody death, some of it actually a bit surprising.  Another surprise was who ended up being the heroes of this story.

The one thing I really didn’t like was the extremely abrupt ending.  I realize this is supposed to suck readers in so they’ll go on to the third and fourth books in the series, but I’m not sure I’m invested enough in the characters to bother.  I have no patience for Jun at this point.  The little girl, though….it might be worth it to see how she turns out.  There was a bit of foreshadowing near the end that piqued my interest in her.  Will it be enough?

I received a free copy of this book from Booksprout in exchange for my honest review.

The Eyes in the Dark (Tales of Crow #1) by Chris Ward is described as “an exciting blend of horror, fantasy and dystopian science-fiction with a heavy dash of black humour.”  I didn’t really get that out of it.

The basic premise is that a group of Japanese students take a field trip to a study camp in the Japanese Alps, where they’re supposed to learn about British culture.  They’re joined by a washed-up rock band who took a wrong turn just as a huge snow storm comes through.  They’re trapped in the camp with the resident “ghost” who appears as an odd, bird-like creature.  Students get sick, there are rock slides, and some monster is going around killing people.  There’s lots of death (a good bit of it is pretty bloody), but not really a lot of horror.

The amount of individual angst was a bit over the top, I thought, but the author certainly provided insight into several of the characters.  Each chapter was told from a different person’s point of view, so it felt choppy.  I had trouble getting truly invested in any of the characters, mostly because we didn’t really spend that much time with anyone.  There was a lot of foreshadowing, so by the time we were given a clear description of the monster, my response was along the lines of “well, yeah, I figured that out a few chapters back.”  The author did do a lovely job of setting the scene.  I only saw a few proofreading errors (something I appreciate very much).

I wouldn’t keep this on my Kindle to read again, or buy a hard copy, but I would certainly be willing to read the next book in the series.