iBook all in bold?

I downloaded The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbø with Apple's iBooks a few nights ago and I noticed that the text feels less "clean" and harder to read than other iBooks. Switching fonts doesn't help. After comparing it with the previous novel in the series it would seem that the entire text of The Devil's Star is being rendered in bold. Has anyone else noticed similar problems before with other titles?

Here are a couple of screenshots to illustrate:

In addition I don't think the black background is supposed to be there on this page...

tt2