Genre: Historical, Magical Realism
Reviewer: Lucy
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About The Book
“Is blood thicker than water?”
The answer seems obvious until a half-millennium-old blood feud ignited between twin brothers of a 16th century Scottish Reiver clan revisits violence generation to generation, pursuing their descendants from island to island and onto a new continent, where the familiar proverb is ultimately pitted against this fluid tale of guilt, blood, water, and time.
Rich with magical realism, Is Blood Thicker taps millennia-old folklore to spin a modern fable of love, pain, and family wisdom consumed by a lived code:
‘Drink, Pray, Fight, Feck’ … and a fox.
The Review
Is Blood Thicker by CK Page flows from the 16th century to the 18th, and then into the 20th century. At first, moving forward, or back, in time, literally in the middle of a sentence can be disconcerting, but it actually works, allowing us to see what has happened before and then move to the next segment of time with a new generation.
We start with Conall and Hugo, twins who are driven by jealousy and a sense of self based on birth order, complicated by their family’s place in a brutal Scottish highland society. Their actions, witnessed by the mystical fox, set their family on a generational course that can only be broken by one of their own.
There is a dark quality to this story that draws you in and keeps you reading. You want to know if this generation will be smarter than the last, kinder than their ancestors. Or even crueler than those before them. And throughout is Tod, the mystical trickster fox who may be dispensing wisdom or encouraging bad behavior, depending on your point of view.
The pacing and flow of this story is reminiscent of historical, epic tales and keeps the reader right in the midst of the action. Dark and angst-ridden, it is the tale of how one family is doomed to suffer the consequences of their mistakes until they finally learn how to quit repeating them.
The excellent story-telling kept me hanging on every word until the end. This is my first CK Page story, but I look forward to more from this author.
The Reviewer
I’m an avid reader who loves pretty much all genres except math textbooks. As a kid, my parents exposed me to everything from fairies, hobbits, and dragons to the biographies of interesting people around the world, interspersed with poetry, plays, and music. Into adulthood, I spent a lot of years with my nose buried in various textbooks. Now, I read whatever grabs my fancy.
