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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

**Darkling** Dark Fantasy! Book Blast!

 

Check out the dark fantasy novel, Darkling, by our guest, K.M. Rice!

Book Description

June 25, 2013
Midsummer used to be a day of feasts and dances and bonfires. A day when cares were set aside for the joy of grass between our toes, warm hands in our palms, laughter in our hearts. Our celebrations dimmed with the light. Our ancestors said our bonfires asked the sun to keep burning beyond the solstice. But something has upset the balance of our woods. Something so deep that even our bonfires can’t lure the sun back. And he has something to do with it. Of that we’re sure now, which is why I’m being given to him.



Review: 
By, D. Beckmann
Cupid and Psyche (or better, Till We Have Faces), a bit of Wuthering Heights, a good dose of Jane Eyre, and a lot of The Sixth Sense, all mixed together in an imaginary world where the lines between life and death, the physical and the spiritual, barely exist.

A young woman believes she must give up her life to save her family - even her whole village - from a mysterious evil darkness that is leading to their ruin. But in her act of self-sacrificial giving - an important theme in the story - she initiates a train of circumstances that leads to dramatic insights concerning the people around her and about herself.

Miss Rice has done a good job composing a complex plot that gives scope for reflection upon human nature. The story is scary and a bit steamy in one place - though not in a degrading or defrauding way, thankfully - and therefore is for mature readers. There is a surprise revelation - I will not say where! - that is almost too much at once, but it is not a long novel; progress in the plot needs to be made. However, the revelation does work in the world she depicts and it sets the stage for an unexpected, and I would say solid and pleasing, resolution to the story.

Stayed up til 3:00 a.m. reading it. It's better than The Woman in Black. If you like something a bit on the Gothic side with a vein of redemption, then get the book.

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