This is the second of this author's books I've tried to read and now I'm quite satisfied that she's not an author for me. The first problem with this novel is the multiple PoVs, at least one of which is first person, which rarely works for me. I found neither of the first two main characters I met to be of any interest, and I gave up quickly on any plans to read further. If I'd known that Kirkus reviews praised it I wouldn't have even started reading this, because Kirkus never met a novel they didn't rave over - like every novel is brilliant? How can that be?! Negative reviews are a big negative with them and what that means is that their reviews are worthless because they'll praise anything.
As far as this novel is concerned, the main character is an idiot whose irresponsible stupidity gets her father killed. That's a big enough indictment, but no doubt she gets over it very quickly with a cheap and badly-written YA "romance". Barf. The main character's name doesn't help: Tessa Skye? Seriously - a girl who has an amulet that can transform her into a sparrow just happens to be named 'skye'? She's supposedly a locksmith's apprentice although she seems to do little in that regard, but no doubt her lock-picking skills will predictably avail her in the story - perhaps when she frees this loser guy from the stocks, but I couldn't stomach the idea of reading that far.
The author seems enamored of trying to think up pseudo-catchy names for objects and running two words together to get there. For example, the amulet isn't an amulet, it's a 'windrider' and the magic wand Tessa seeks to resurrect the father she got killed is the 'dreadmarrow' of the title, but it's not made of bone, it's made of wood, so go figure. It's just a lot of stupid and pointless, but the biggest problem for me was that the story was slow, boring, and predictable. It was going nowhere and offered nothing that endless poorly-written YA stories haven't offered before. Because of that, it's not worth reading.
