Marshall Lore

I'm halfway through Blood of Angels, which I'm enjoying. It does seem to be continuing a trend: The Straw Men was readable as a once-off novel (and a fantastic one), whereas The Lonely Dead read as an unplanned sequel. So far Blood of Angels reads, not even as the third volume in a trilogy (although of course a climactic enough ending could still change that), but as the next book in an ongoing series. Which is a valid enough thing to be in its own right, of course, but it does make it seem less of a worthy successor to the sheer horrific brilliance of The Straw Men.

After showing us a ribcage and the bones of a hand on the previous two books, the cover of Blood of Angels presents us with a pelvis. Which is always nice. If I carry on buying the series, will I eventually be able to assemble a complete skeleton? Interestingly as well, after adorning the ribcage with a necklace and the hand-bones with a ring, the artist chooses to break up the pelvis with a bullet. Perhaps the publishers felt that the kinds of jewellery generally found in the pelvic region might not go down well with book-buyers.