Ben Rigby's Reviews > Black River

Still a four-star read, but this is my least favourite of the Tuva books so far. Don’t get me wrong, it was great to have Tuva back, and she continues to feel like a real person. Similarly, Gavrik feels like a very real, very oppressive place. So, I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as Dark Pines or Red Snow. The outcome didn’t feel quite as satisfying, and some of the plot points relied on Tuva making uncharacteristically silly decisions.

Also - and I’ve mentioned this in reviews of other books - does anything get properly proofread these days? There have been errors and typos in most of the books I’ve read recently, and this one had a lot - certainly far more than I’ve noticed in any other Will Dean book. As well as missing words and misplaced apostrophes, there was ‘eek’ instead of ‘eke’, ‘who’s’ when it should have been ‘whose’, and the common mistake of referring to Gordon Ramsay as ‘Gordon Ramsey’. In a single chapter, over about six pages, there was ‘scold’ when it should have been ‘scald’, ‘desert’ instead of ‘dessert’ and a set of missing speech marks.

Overall, it’s still a page-turner, and still a cut above a lot of other thrillers I’ve read. Just, for me, didn’t reach the heights of the previous books.