The Ink Black Heart

This one is my least favorite book so far. It's very lengthy (1,012 pages) and hard to slog through because of far too many anonymous characters combined with the difficulty in reading the multiple, concurrent chat room conversations between the anonymous characters. It was hard to know how to properly read those chat room conversations to get the intended information and characterization. Sometimes there were three going at once.

The mystery is complex to the point of fault, and by the end I needed a schematic to keep it all straight. I still don't think I understand how it all worked out.

However, Strike and Robin are always worth a slog. I feel like I know them having lived in their fictional world for the last six months. Chapter 1 snatches defeat from the jaws of victory for the two of them. I'll elaborate no further on that. The coda at the end is tear-inducing and sets up an interesting dynamic for the next book.

I am very curious how The Ink Black Heart will be adapted for the show because of the unique setting of much of the mystery. It would be the toughest one to adapt in my opinion, but there are some superb events in the book that are tailor-made for the screen and had better be included! I look forward to seeing how they do it. I read they start filming it in early 2024.