River of Ink by Paul M. M. Cooper (not finished)

Blurp: In thirteenth-century Sri Lanka, Asanka, poet to the king, lives a life of luxury, enjoying courtly life and a sweet, furtive love affair with a palace servant, a village girl he is teaching to write. But when Magha, a prince from the mainland, usurps the throne, Asanka's role as court poet dramatically alters. Magha is a cruel and calculating king--and yet, a lover of poetry--and he commissions Asanka to translate a holy Sanskrit epic into the Tamil language spoken by his recently acquired subjects. The poem will be an olive branch--a symbol of unity between the two cultures.

But in different languages, in different contexts, meaning can become slippery. First inadvertently, then deliberately and dangerously, Asanka's version of the epic, centered on the killing of an unjust ruler, inspires and arouses the oppressed people of the land. Asanka must juggle the capricious demands of a king with the growing demands of his own political consciousness--and his heart--if he wishes to survive and imagine a future with the woman he loves.

I have never done this before, a not finished post. And I feel bad, so so bad. I am not one to give up on books, although sometimes when I continued with one I couldn't get into I ended up in a reading slump. Would take forever to finish that one book and when I did I didn't really fancy picking up another one for some time. Now that I am blogging I don't really want that to happen, so this once I have to simply give up. 

And I tried, I really did, I was 25% into this book. However I didn't have a clue what was actually happening beside the fact it was about a poet, poet to a King. The King gets killed and a new crazy King rules, one who wants the poet to translate some poetry. The poet, who is married also has a mistress. And that's all I caught of the story. There was so many strange names and places, I couldn't follow any of it. I got confused about who was who. And not only that but the version I received of netgalley had many mistakes and random numbers half way inside sentences which made it a bit hard to have a comfortable read. 

I am really grateful to netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this and I am sorry that on this occasion I couldn't write a full review.