I’m not sure whether this one just suffered as a consequence of being read alongside several other books that I absolutely adored, but there was just something about The Whale Road that didn’t manage to capture me as some of the other books had.

I think the main problem was the the characters didn’t have the depth or ‘liveliness’ that I want from my characters, their voices fell a little flat, as though they were there to fulfill a role rather than to be living, breathing people with nuances and threads of their own and while I can’t say that I disliked them – more than you were supposed to anyway – nor was I invested in their stories or the outcome.

That said, I will say that the book did have a promising premise and backbone, and while it didn’t have quite the impact it perhaps could have with richer characters, it did have some fantastic fight scenes and settings and if the characters had matched the world building I feel it would have worked a lot better.