Thankfully there is a sequel to this book because this ends in a hurry with too many questions left unanswered. With Misha the penguin out of the picture having surgery to save his heart in the last chunk of the book the focus goes back onto Viktor.
You have to say that he is not the most loveable character. He lives with Nina and Sonya yet doesn’t seem that attached to either. When faced with the reality of what he has been doing – helping write death orders – he also seems to be only mildly disturbed.
What does trigger a reaction, a selfish one of self-preservation, is when he faces losing his own life.
Viktor runs away and as a result the book sort of hangs there. It is an ending that leaves an awful lot of the blanks to be filled in by the reader. In some respects too many because by the time you have thought about them you have moved onto another book. Maybe the best idea is to get straight into Penguin Lost and treat this as one half of a two-part story.
A review will follow soon…
