Blake’s willingness to toss her characters in the meat grinder (not quite literally) helps to generate tension and you’re never certain just who will make it out any particular scene. Anna Dressed in Blood has real and legitimate threats and Blake doesn’t flinch from putting her characters in some dire and frequently gruesome situations. While Blake might not focus on a horrific atmosphere she doesn’t flinch from violence.

This works well enough and keeps the pace of the novel flowing forwards. Reader’s are often given a simple explanation for a spell but are quickly thrown into its execution. There isn’t any lengthy exposition on the spells we see worked in the novel and their purpose is cleverly linked to their execution. Readers quickly come to understand that Cas’s abilities are intricately and inseparably tied to his father’s athame but the details of that connection remain a mystery though they do play an important role in the novel’s conclusion. This is a totally acceptable approach to the subject if you go into the novel expecting something more akin to dark or urban fantasy rather than horror.īlake doesn’t get bogged down in the details of the novel. Ghosts in this novel are sort of a more mundane threat if an otherworldly one. There isn’t any slow buildup to the revelation of Cas’s ability to see and kill the dead. Kendare Blake doesn’t spend too much fostering an atmosphere of horror and she chooses to render the presence of the dead as a regular occurrence for Cas. The first thing I’ll say about Anna Dressed in Blood is that it isn’t particularly scary.

Along with his mother, a white witch, Cas sets out to investigate the myth of the titular Anna partly as a training mission to take on the ghost that murdered his father. The story centers on Cas Lockwood and teen who inherited his father’s athame and his father’s profession: hunting and killing ghosts.

Its jacket description reminded me in many ways of the CW’s long running Supernatural in my opinion one of the more entertaining genre shows on television. Anna Dressed in Blooddrew my eye with its evocative title and subtle cover.

Anna dressed in blood review