Take a photo of a barcode or cover
eggcatsreads 's review for:
The Darkness Before Them
by Matthew Ward
A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Orbit Books for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This is a much slower-paced epic fantasy that, while it does pick up once the plot kicks off near the end, a good majority of this book is spent with a few characters laying the groundwork for worldbuilding. I will admit that it took me a good 30% to finally know who all the characters were, and to stop mixing them up. There is a glossary of the people in this book, but I feel like there could have been one or two cut until they became more relevant, to help with the confusion.
We mostly stay with two main characters, Kat and Damant, who are on opposite sides of the conflict in this story. Kat is a thief captured to be executed, and Damant is a guard to the Countess of the family ordering the execution. Damant is a complicated character, in that he is loyal to the system, and yet is the reason for the creation of one of the leaders of the resistance. It took a bit longer for me to connect to Damant or his motives than it did to Kat, but eventually he grew on me.
As Kat progresses through the story, she slowly changes more and more from uncaring about anyone except herself, to helping others with no clear rewards for herself. I did appreciate this bit of growth, as there were a few bits near the beginning of the story that made me uncomfortable and if this was never changed I doubt I’d have continued the story.
(For instance, in her original apartment, she comments about the couple above her fighting and how the man is significantly larger than the woman and it only being a matter of time before he kills her, but she won’t intervene because she decided to stay with him so it’s her own fault. Yikes. I will admit, this being included made me consider DNFing because my trust for male fantasy authors is not very high, but as Kat grows she reflects on this instance specifically and regrets her actions. So I’m glad I continued.)
If you like fantasy stories with some action, but a lot of focus on politics, then this would be a good book for you. I do like some political fantasies, but I also felt that some of the action scenes were a bit lackluster.
(Kat keeps getting into fights with people that she KNOWS are stronger than her, and then is surprised when she loses? I don’t mean to be pedantic, but it got old watching her decide to get into fights when we already knew the end results. There were many times I felt like yelling “KAT YOU’VE ALREADY FOUGHT THIS PERSON AND LOST, WHY DO YOU THINK DOING IT AGAIN WOULD WORK?”)
There were also some issues I found with the description of places and objects, as they would be describing doing something and then suddenly something I didn’t picture would appear, and I’d have to go back to see if there was anything like it described that I missed. (The answer, usually, was no. It just appeared out of the blue and changed the scenery.)
A lot of this book vaguely reminded me of Wesley Chu’s “The War Arts Saga” fantasy series, so if you really enjoyed that I think this book would be a good fit. Personally, I kind of liked TWAS better than this book, but that was more to do with the confusion this book left me with at multiple instances and readability.
There is a plot twist near the end that completely changes how you read everything before, that I thought was extremely well done. There were multiple hints throughout the book where you knew something was off, but you didn’t quite realize what - but once the plot twist is revealed suddenly all the inconsistencies make sense. I really liked how it was done, and thought it really fit well into the story.
However, despite my complaints this story never reached the point where I felt compelled to DNF it, and I will be reading the sequel to see how the story progresses. My rating is for 3.5 stars, rated up, as this wasn’t a bad novel and once I understood better who was who and what exactly was going on, I enjoyed it much better. I think when the sequel comes out I might enjoy this book better on a reread, than I did initially.
This is a much slower-paced epic fantasy that, while it does pick up once the plot kicks off near the end, a good majority of this book is spent with a few characters laying the groundwork for worldbuilding. I will admit that it took me a good 30% to finally know who all the characters were, and to stop mixing them up. There is a glossary of the people in this book, but I feel like there could have been one or two cut until they became more relevant, to help with the confusion.
We mostly stay with two main characters, Kat and Damant, who are on opposite sides of the conflict in this story. Kat is a thief captured to be executed, and Damant is a guard to the Countess of the family ordering the execution. Damant is a complicated character, in that he is loyal to the system, and yet is the reason for the creation of one of the leaders of the resistance. It took a bit longer for me to connect to Damant or his motives than it did to Kat, but eventually he grew on me.
As Kat progresses through the story, she slowly changes more and more from uncaring about anyone except herself, to helping others with no clear rewards for herself. I did appreciate this bit of growth, as there were a few bits near the beginning of the story that made me uncomfortable and if this was never changed I doubt I’d have continued the story.
(For instance, in her original apartment, she comments about the couple above her fighting and how the man is significantly larger than the woman and it only being a matter of time before he kills her, but she won’t intervene because she decided to stay with him so it’s her own fault. Yikes. I will admit, this being included made me consider DNFing because my trust for male fantasy authors is not very high, but as Kat grows she reflects on this instance specifically and regrets her actions. So I’m glad I continued.)
If you like fantasy stories with some action, but a lot of focus on politics, then this would be a good book for you. I do like some political fantasies, but I also felt that some of the action scenes were a bit lackluster.
(Kat keeps getting into fights with people that she KNOWS are stronger than her, and then is surprised when she loses? I don’t mean to be pedantic, but it got old watching her decide to get into fights when we already knew the end results. There were many times I felt like yelling “KAT YOU’VE ALREADY FOUGHT THIS PERSON AND LOST, WHY DO YOU THINK DOING IT AGAIN WOULD WORK?”)
There were also some issues I found with the description of places and objects, as they would be describing doing something and then suddenly something I didn’t picture would appear, and I’d have to go back to see if there was anything like it described that I missed. (The answer, usually, was no. It just appeared out of the blue and changed the scenery.)
A lot of this book vaguely reminded me of Wesley Chu’s “The War Arts Saga” fantasy series, so if you really enjoyed that I think this book would be a good fit. Personally, I kind of liked TWAS better than this book, but that was more to do with the confusion this book left me with at multiple instances and readability.
There is a plot twist near the end that completely changes how you read everything before, that I thought was extremely well done. There were multiple hints throughout the book where you knew something was off, but you didn’t quite realize what - but once the plot twist is revealed suddenly all the inconsistencies make sense. I really liked how it was done, and thought it really fit well into the story.
However, despite my complaints this story never reached the point where I felt compelled to DNF it, and I will be reading the sequel to see how the story progresses. My rating is for 3.5 stars, rated up, as this wasn’t a bad novel and once I understood better who was who and what exactly was going on, I enjoyed it much better. I think when the sequel comes out I might enjoy this book better on a reread, than I did initially.