J.A. Ironside's Reviews > The Dark World

ARC copy kindly provided by author in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: Story and world building 4.5*

Rating: Style and overall book 3.5*


Ok, having allowed the story to settle a bit I'm ready to dive in and review it. I know my rating system looks completely nuts so let me attempt to explain.

This is vampires with a difference. Not the sparkling, mythical creatures of Stephanie Meyer. Not the tortured souls questing for shreds of humanity while seeking to exploit it of Anne Rice. Not the rather wet predators of L J Smith's vampire diaries nor the strange malformed creatures of traditional folklore. There are nods to all of these sources and many more (Underworld and Vampire the Masquerade in particular) but this is still very much its own thing. And the first item to get your head wrapped round is that these creatures are OTHER. They will not act like humans because they are not human. In fact watching other Creatures strive for humanity gives this a rich context but such a questing is in vain (or vein hahaha..er ..ahem). So I loved that. I loved the fact that the Dark World was a shadow sister to our own. It was richly imagined and immersive, often feeling like you had been left at the edge of an ancient forest and you - the pitiful human - had no idea what the rules were. There's some tremendous beauty in that darkness.

The story was compelling. It wasn't so much the originality as the passion for the subject with which it was delivered. The characters were engaging. I can't say I have a particular favourite - although Eleanor Black comes close - but there is no definite good and bad. I enjoyed that emotional complexity. So for all those reasons yes 4.5*

However I came unstuck on several points. A lot of this is personal preference. Some of it is the author finding and claiming her voice. Some of it is clearly where this is the beginning of a series. None of it was wrong per say, it was just a little jarring for me.

The fabulous world building often sidelines the story. There's no info dump or anything, it's just that the plot gets eclipsed by the place. I imagine that now it is all set up this will not be the case in book two and I'd love to see where the series goes.

The characters are great, however I felt that we were introduced to too many of them in one go, right at the start. The POV also shifts freely rather than being restricted to two or three characters. This is fine - it's a dark fantasy epic afterall - I just would have preferred time to get to know three or four characters well, see through their eyes, before bringing more characters in. Again I think this won't be an issue in the next book.

All the characters have fascinating back stories that are fully explored. I loved this because I genuinely was interested. The downside was that I kept losing the thread of the main plot because of it.

But ultimately the big drawback for me was that it took me a while to fully integrate with the author's style. All the species of Dark World creature are considered proper nouns snd get capitalised for instance - Vampire, Lycan, Elves. There are slso odd sentence constructions such as ' the Vampire was caused to consider to stop.' This was partly a reader failing as I just didn't click that it was deliberate to start with. When I did, I found that the style was voice-y and re-enforced that sense of otherness running throughout the whole book. It did slow the pace down for me though.

Overal verdict - a worthy 4 * and I look forward to reading more. This book had its kinks and flaws but is still one of the most promising and original vampire/supernatural tales I've read. The ending in particular was great. Such deep schemes from Dracula all along.

If you are an Underworld fan you'll love this. Highly recommended.