Hi, there friends! I’m so happy to finally be posting my The Darkening review! I’ve been sitting on this review (and this amazing book) for a while now. Let’s jump in!
Elevator Pitch
An Ember in the Ashes meets Shadow & Bone! The worldbuilding is stunning, and the characters are not who they seem. At the heart of it is an enemies to lovers to enemies romance you can root for!
About The Darkening
Title: The Darkening
Author: Sunya Mara
Rating: 3 Stars
CAWPILE: 6.7/10
Genre: Fantasy
Content Warnings: Death, parental death, blood, fire
Tropes: Enemies to lovers
Publisher: Clarion Books
Date Published: July 5th 2022
Goodreads Description: Vesper Vale is the daughter of revolutionaries. Failed revolutionaries. When her mother was caught by the queen’s soldiers, they gave her a choice: death by the hangman’s axe, or death by the Storm that surrounds the city and curses anyone it touches. She chose the Storm. And when the queen’s soldiers—led by a paranoid prince—catch up to Vesper’s father after twelve years on the run, Vesper will do whatever it takes to save him from sharing that fate.
Even arm herself with her father’s book of dangerous experimental magic.
Even infiltrate the prince’s elite squad of soldier-sorcerers.
And cheat her way into his cold heart.
But when Vesper learns that there’s more to the story of her mother’s death, she’ll have to make a choice if she wants to save her city: trust the devious prince with her family’s secrets, or follow her mother’s footsteps into the Storm.
I received a review copy from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
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The Darkening Review
Characters – 6/10
Our main protag is Vesper, and I feel like I don’t know her at all. Her main motivation is to save her father, but for some reason, that’s also her only personality trait. I mean she didn’t show any interest in learning ikons beyond saving her father. The other characters fell pretty flat for me too.
They all have only a single personality trait and we don’t spend enough time with them in my opinion. I just wanted to see more from them. I didn’t really feel the romance between Vesper and Dalca. Vesper had more chemistry with Cas and more in common with Izamal.
Atmosphere – 9/10
I LOVE IT. The concept of a constant storm that’s raging, with monsters lurking inside. It’s amazing. I wish we got more of the ikonomancy. We never spend any time actually learning anything about it (and neither does our MC). There’s really cool lore, but I want to go deeper. We get some more lore and ikonomancy towards the end, but it’s not enough for me.
Writing – 6/10
For a debut book, the writing isn’t bad. However, the writing is a bit clunky in some places. Sometimes the scene changes without me knowing or picking up that it’s changed. Characters and objects would also just disappear, almost as if the author forgot they were there. It happens a few times and confused me a bit. The writing is also very surface level, we could have gone a bit deeper. Overall though, it’s not bad.
Plot – 6/10
I picked this book up for the concept, and the plot (mostly) didn’t disappoint. It picks up around the 30% mark, when she starts training. Though most of the plot and the pacing in the first 80% is good, it wavers a bit in the last part. So much was crammed into the last 20% of this book. Enough to fill a whole other book. That’s my main gripe with this book.
“To do the one good thing I must do, I find myself caught in a thousand small evils.”
Intrigue – 6/10
The main conflict is between Vesper and the Storm, and Vesper and Dalca. The conflict with the storm is much more fleshed out. I loved the lore surrounding the storm and Vesper’s personal attachment to it. It wrapped up so well. I would have liked to see more conflict and interaction between Dalca and Vesper. They had zero chemistry in my opinion and it didn’t help the conflict at all.
Logic – /10
I’m still fuzzy on the details of ikonomancy. The only real explanation we get is towards the end of the book. I don’t need to have my hand held, but some exposition would have been great. It seems these days that authors swing wildly between too much exposition and too little. There’s a fine balance and I hope this author gets to it one day.
Enjoyment – 7/10
I cannot wait for the sequel to The Darkening. The world is so unique and I need to know what happens next!
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Goodness this cover is SO STUNNING, every time I see it I stare for a good 10 seconds haha. It’s unfortunate that the characters fell flat and the worldbuilding seems like it could be better, which might hamper my enjoyment of the book. 🙁 But the VIBES!? so glad the atmosphere delivered!