Taste of Marrow by

16 October 2017


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Genre: ,
Cover Illustrator :
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Rated :

River of Teeth ; 2

The events of River of Teeth have left repercussions. Not least of which are the feral hippos! but also the Houndstooth outfit1 have been separated, those of them2 that survived the Harriet disaster that is. Houndstooth himself is driven to find Hero, obsessed even. He thinks of little else and cares for nothing else. This is not a good way to be.

I really enjoyed the first book, but I think that they shouldn’t have been split into two novellas. The whole story would have worked much better if the reader could read straight through. As it is I had to spend time at the beginning re-sorting out everybody in my head. And I didn’t even read the first one that long ago.

Also the plot here is looser not as action packed. It felt a little stretched in places, whereas if this had all been the one book then maybe it could have been tighter and quicker paced?

However, I still really enjoyed it. Less hippo action than before, but more character interaction. Plus we got more Adelia, and she’s pretty awesome. I really liked the way these characters are dealing with the fact that they as people are changing. People often do throughout their lives. Some of these were changes are happening simply because characters/people adapt and change as they age, others are driven by events in the books.

I really like Gailey’s style of writing, and the fact that her characters are diverse without feeling forced, or even worse, like box-ticking. They are characters, and like people in real life, characters come in all shapes and sizes. Two thumbs up.

But it really isn’t as good as the first. That being said, the first was pretty damn good, and not many books are that entertaining, so it was a high standard to live up to. I’ll certainly read more by her, but if you haven’t tried her yet then I think that the two stories that make up are going to be released as one, called American Hippo, I think they should have done that from the start.


  1. as I’m now dubbing them 

  2. see I’m not spoiling book one 

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