Reviews with content warning for Torture - Taste of Marrow

Taste of Marrow gracefully handles the transformation of a betrayer from the first book into a protagonist in the second. The way Hero and Houndstooth’s relationship was handled in River of Teeth meant that the dynamic in ToM is completely believable despite their relatively brief acquaintance before this point. If RoT is characterized by grief and revenge, ToM adds sorrow and rage to the mix, as the heist which pulled them together is over and they’re dealing with the aftermath. While the characters are in suspense, I’m grateful that as a reader I wasn’t in the dark about whether or not certain characters were alive. That meant a lot of the suspense and anguish was over whether they’d find out the answers, and what they’d do about it, not what the answers were. Please don’t mistake this for a lack of tension or uncertainty, there’s plenty of that, with long stretches where I was on the edge of my seat, but there’s particular feeling of being lied to as a reader, and this story avoids that. The scenes between Hero and Adelia, especially when Hero finally talks about why they retired... goddamn I love that scene. This is a quieter story than the first one (at least until the finale), and as much as I loved the heists from before, I love the quiet moments between characters who might not like each other personally but are committed to being their own kind of decent.

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ailsaod's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

OK these books are criminally short. I only bought the sequel after seeing how short the first book was because I desperately needed to know how the cliffhanger of the first book was resolved.

This book is a little bit longer than book one and heavily focuses on the development of the main characters (sadly to the detriment of the plot, which feels very rushed) so while I enjoyed learning more about everyone I feel weirdly unsatisfied but also not? Given the length of the book it is a miracle that so much gets fitted in without it feeling frantic!

No spoilers but Hero remains the MVP - a major plus of this book is that we get much more of their POV - and the characters were a lot more likable on the whole than in book 1, though still just as morally grey.

Would just like to warn people (though if you got through the ear scene in book one you will most likely be fine) that there were two graphic torture scenes which while not lengthy were very intense and one scene where someone is eaten by a hippo that I would say is more graphic than other instances in the series.

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