Blade And Bone by Catherine Johnson

The Blurb On The Back:

Can Ezra escape the terror of the revolution?

Young surgeon Ezra McAdam must hasten to France to find his missing friends – but Revolutionary Paris is a dangerous place to be if you’re English.

Citizen Renaud is keen to enlist Ezra’s help experimenting with reanimation. The regular beheadings are providing useful fodder for his research.

But Ezra mustn’t be distracted from his search. He needs to find Loveday and rescue the young prince Mahmoud – at all costs.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Catherine Johnson’s historical YA sequel is a breakneck paced affair rich in historical detail and strong at dealing with racial prejudice but at times the pacing is too brisk and for me some of the characterisation (especially Loveday) suffered as a result, which is a shame as it’s a strong book that tackles a fascinating time. Ezra really develops in this book – I particularly enjoyed his moral and physical queasiness at assisting in Renaud’s experiments and I enjoyed his interactions with the dashing General Dumas (a real person from the period). Luc is also a welcome addition – smart but vulnerable I wished that there had been more interaction between him and Ezra and Mahmoud really gets downgraded as a side character thanks to his arrival. Likewise some of Loveday’s behaviour seemed out of character given the events in SAWBONES and existed to serve the plot more than her and Ezra’s history (I particularly disliked her impetuousness, which only showed to prove how little she’d learned). Johnson’s got a strong feel for the period – conveying a sense of what Paris was like as the Terror starts to gear up and Ezra behaves like a young man of the time but the plot does jump at times (notably the tacked on postscript) and I wished there’d been more room to breathe. With the duology completed, I would definitely check out Johnson’s next book.

Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.