I got a special edition of this book in a subscription box. Firstly, the cover is stunning. The main character was likeable and also mostly relatable, although she seemed to pick fault and change her opinion on people so easily. I appreciate that the ending didn’t end on a cliff hanger. 50 pages from the end I was thinking “any other author would leave it here”, but felt that the ending could’ve made the book a standalone. Overall I enjoyed it, although not sure I’d be bothered about picking up book 2 given the satisfying ending to this one.

Sunya Mara - The Darkening

Ich habe bis 71% gelesen, habe mich aber jetzt doch entschieden das Buch abzubrechen.

Wo lag das Problem?
Um ehrlich zu sein glaube ich lag es daran dass es zu sehr Young Adult war. Mir fehlte die Liebesgeschichte und auch teilweise der rote Faden. Das Buch hatte keinen richtigen Höhepunkt und es fehlte mir immer wieder die Lust weiterzulesen.
Auch mit der Welt wurde ich nicht richtig warm.
Ich habe mir irrsinnig schwer getan in die Welt abzutauchen, die Welt überhaupt zu verstehen. Es kamen nie klare Bilder in meinen Kopf und es fehlte das Gefühl. Die Protagonistin hatte auch magische Fähigkeiten und da sprach man von irgendwelchen Symbolen-Insignien etc. da fehlte mir der komplette Plan! Wie jetzt?
Ich muss gestehen ich hatte mir etwas ganz anderes vorgestellt anhand des Klappentextes.

Empfehlung?
Ich möchte das Buch auf keinen Fall schlecht reden. Ich würde es jedem empfehlen der nicht zwingend eine Liebesgeschichte in Fantasy Büchern braucht und wirklich ein gutes Young Adult Fantasy Buch sucht.

Mein Buch war es leider nicht.
1 ⭐️ / 5 ⭐️
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I've read up to 71%, but now I've decided to DNF the book.

What was the problem?
To be honest I think it was because it was really very young adult. I missed the love story and sometimes the common thread. The book never had a real high and I didn't have the desire to continue reading.
I didn't really got into the World.
I found it incredibly difficult to immerse myself in the world, to understand the world at all. Real pictures never came into my head and the feeling was missing. The protagonist also had magical abilities and there was talk of some symbolic insignia etc. I didn't have the complete plan! Like right now?
I have to admit I had imagined something completely different based on the blurb.

Recommendation?
I definitely don't want to badmouth the book. I would recommend it to anyone who doesn't necessarily need a love story in fantasy books and is really looking for a good young adult fantasy book.

Unfortunately, it wasn't my book.
1 ⭐️ / 5 ⭐️

Vesper and her father live in the outskirts of the city, very close to the storm. The Storm curses everybody it touches and has been there as long as Vesper remembers. Her parents are failed revolutionaries and Vesper has to keep her fatehr’s identity hidden, as her mother was sentenced to the Storm twelve years prior. The King’s soldiers find Vesper’s father and she is determined to do anything she can to protect him and stop him from facing the same fate.

‘Blood isn’t a leash, love. Your choice is yours.’

Vesper has been forbidden from using magic, but when her father is taken she vows to learn whatever she can. The prince has an elite squad of sorcerers, and in order to become as powerful as she can, Vesper decides to infiltrate it. She meets one of the prince’s soldiers, Iz, who offers to help her in disguise her. Once in, she officially meets Prince Dalca, who I adored! And his other top soldier, Cas, who is her trainer, and immediately decides he despises her. I loved Vesper and Cas’ dynamic over the course of the novel as they learned to respect one another, especially after that ending!

‘To do the one good thing that I must do, I find myself caught in a thousand small evils.”
I squeeze his hand until he looks at me. “I hope that one thing is worth it.”
“It is the only thing that matters.’

Prince Dalca is the love interest and I did fall in love. He was charming and Vesper and Dalca worked together over the novel to figure out how to stop the Storm. Whilst helping Dalca, Vesper was determined to find her father and free him, which led to some very rocky moments in the relationship I was rooting for!

I loved this book and if you love YA Fantasy with great world building, magic systems and a bit of romance, then this is the book for you! After that ending, I am desperate for the sequel!

I LOVED the concept of this book! What a synopsis to play with! I loved how Mara built the relationship with the reader and the protagonist. Unfortunately for me it lost its way a little in the middle. I found myself a little disconnected and my interest was only peaked again during the last few chapters of the book. I enjoyed it, but I felt that perhaps for me there was more potential there.

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me, with some really interesting concepts and moments that I thought got a bit weighed down at times. I enjoyed the notion of the storm-touched and I also thought that the icon rules for the magic system was really interesting. Unfortunately, I found the characters and their interactions a bit lackluster and not very well fleshed out, although I did find the relationship between Vesper and her father fascinating. Overall, this was a solid and enjoyable read, but I don't think I'll continue in the series.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

An engaging debut! The magic system was well laid out, there was fantastic world building, and of course my favourite enemies to lovers trope! Vesper is an endearing MC, although I think my favourite character had to be Casvian - rough around the edges but loveable on the inside. None of the characters in this story are truly 'good'. They've all got their own motivations and I loved that - morally good characters can sometimes feel boring and unrealistic. The ending was very exciting and left off perfectly for what promises to be a fantastic sequel!

This was a really interesting and enjoyable fantasy book! The world building and magic systems were really interesting and unique.

There were definitely characters I enjoyed more than others and I have to admit at times I found Vesper to be really flawed and selfish.

I’m really interested to see what will happen in the sequel!

I really enjoyed this debut from Sunya Mara. The world building was incredible and I was hocked from the first chapter. I loved each of the characters and how they interacted with each other. The plot twists throughout kept me guessing. I will definitely be reading more from Sunya Mara in the future.

This story sounded exactly like my type of book and the premise was really intriguing unfortunately I did not enjoy it like I thought I would.
The characters weren't fleshed out enough and neither was the romance which was instalove and I hate that trope. The main character and love interest know each other for all of 2 days and maybe a handful of conversations and yet they say they've fallen in love with each other?
Everything also seemed to happen very conveniently so there wasn't any real tension or build up to what should have been some intense scenes and it just made me lose interest. I didn't really care for the characters so I just couldn't root for them.

If you where thrilled just by reading the plot then you won’t be disappointed by the book. The plot was everything and I fell in love with the main character.
Would totally recommend!

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this well done Sunya Mara for writing such an original book, now to wait for the second one 😬.

The main protagonist is Vesper a 17 year old girl who's been on the run with her farther from their worlds protectors the Wardana for reasons unknown to Vesper other than the fact her dad was part of a rebellion.

The world building was unique and very well done throughout, Vesper lives in the 5th ring of her land closest to the storm which houses stormbeasts hungry for humans and the storm is closing in already devouing the 6th and 7th rings. Vesper finds herself needing to save the city and her father with no one to turn to untill..... I won't spoil it. I have recommended this to my friends already and would rate it a soild 4 starts.

Revolution. Rebellion. Sign me up! I could not put this book down! It's definitely one of my favourite books of the year!

I finished The Darkening a couple of weeks ago and it's another one of those books that I don't know how to write a review for because I'm all in my feels.

I just really liked this book. I loved Vesper and her determination. Dalca, Casvian, and Iz were all interesting, I loved their group dynamic and how each of them had a different relationship with Vesper. In the end, my favourite pairing was probably Cas and Vesper - I liked how far they came and I'm excited to see how they work together in the sequel. No spoilers from me, but I'm really curious about Iz [and did I sense some romantic chemistry between him and Cas? Honestly this book had me shipping everyone (hide spoiler)].

I must admit, the ending did leave me a bit confused, so I might need a reread to brush up on the details that I missed, or hopefully the sequel will clear them up for me. I sort of do but sort of don't understand the whole thing with the King and the Queen.

I am very excited for the sequel, especially after *that* ending. Really curious to see how the characters go from here after those deaths and betrayals.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher for this e-ARC in exchange of an honest review.

I will update this review as I read. But to begin, I absolutely love the protagonist and writing style. I am excited to see where this is going!

Oh, what a wonderful debut this is! A debut that really doesn't read like one. "The Darkening" is the first book of a new ya fantasy duology (at least I think it's going to be a duology?), and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Mara develops a unique world and spends just enough time on worldbuilding to make it feel alive, though I would have loved even more information on, for example, the world beyond the city where everything takes place. The magic system is very cool, with magic based on words and writing and so-called ikons. It's something I haven't read a thousand times over so I really loved it.

The writing is beautiful and, as I have said before, really does not read like a debut author's prose. The plot is captivating and exciting, though the pacing does feel a little off at times. Some parts feel rushed, like the whole plot point of our protagonist, Vesper, learning magic and gaining entrance into the prince's elite military unit. She really didn't do much training, so this whole part felt a little glossed over. There is also something happening in the last about 10% of the book that felt completely off regarding a certain character's actions. Other than that, it was a really engaging read.

Speaking of characters, Vesper is an amazing protagonist that I absolutely ADORE! She's flawed, traumatised to an extent, she's allowed to make mistakes and actually learn from them and she grows beautifully as a person. Her romance with Dalca is, for the most part, very well done - my personal pet peeve is enemies-to-lovers romance where the protagonist absolutely loathes the evil love interest yet somehow wonders if he's really so evil and despicable after looking into his eyes for like, five seconds, which this book does a tiny lil bit of too but then solves it beautifully. Dalca is an intriguing character on his own, though he felt completely inconsistent during those aforementioned last 10%. There is a personality change that is really just too crass to make sense for him and he lost me a little there, to be honest. That part was not done well - but let's see how Mara writes him in the next book. The major side characters, Casvian and Iz, are both absolutely great and once again manage to outshine the actual love interest, but maybe that's just a me problem because I say that about most side characters. I was a little disappointed that there are no important female characters at all having a bigger role in Vesper's journey, so I'm hoping Mara adds one or two in the next book. Generally, all characters are written well and I really liked them and their development.

As a whole this is definitely one of the more unique and better ya fantasies I have read in a while. There is room for improvement, but it's an impressive debut with an action-packed plot and great characters. I also very much loved that there is, in fact, not a clear cut good/evil dichotomy but lots of shades of grey.
3,5 stars, rounded up happily to 4 because I really enjoyed my reading experience.

Vesper Vale lives a quiet life in the 5th ward. Her life is monotonous but mostly safe, safe except for the storm that looms outside the walls of her ward threatening to swallow it whole. What Vesper doesn't know is her father is a failed revolutionary, someone on the run from the Palace, but his past has finally caught up with him. Found by the Prince, her father is captured and taken back to the Palace and Vesper, desperate to help her father, follows him the only way she can, through deception. To save her father, Vesper will have to get close to the boy she hates, the boy who took him from her. But the closer she gets, the more she realises that he isn't bad, simply a boy trying to do all he can to save his people. Vesper now has a decision to make, she can follow the path to the Prince, or the path of her mother, the path that leads straight to the heart of the storm and to a power that has been waiting to be unleashed for generations.

Vesper is a great POV to read this story from. She suffers a great loss at the start of the book, and the more we learn about her past, the more tragic she gets. She's easy to empathise with, all the more so because she isn't one to back down from a fight, she will do anything she can to rescue her father and save her ward from the Storm, even if that means putting herself in the path of Prince Dalca. She is ruthless, but also fiercely loyal to those she trusts and loves, and she is more than willing to loose herself to protect them. We also spend a good deal of time with Dalca, Cavian and Izamal, members of the Wardana, elite warriors who fight beasts that emerge from the Storm, and the people that Vesper falls in with when she heads to the palace to find her father. Every single one has their own goals and aspirations, some working with the crown, others against it, but they all have the best of intentions at heart... even if they don't always show it. I enjoyed that Mara kept our main cast tight knit because it gave us more time to explore them as characters and get a more in depth look into them.

The magic system was something I loved. Extremely intricate and has almost two sides to it. The main magic used by our characters though was called Ikonomancy, the use of Ikon's to create, fix, build, heal. destroy etc. I loved how this was described, how we learn about it through Vesper's own learning, and we could to see just how powerful and dangerous they can be. The second part to it is the Storm that surrounds the Kingdom which, if anyone touches it, makes them 'storm touched' giving them some kind of unique curse that puts them on the outskirts of society. For most of the book we are constantly asking questions. Was it created? Has it always been there? And then towards the end we get a better insight into it, and all the pieces start falling into place. This part of the magic system really showcases Mara's foreshadowing skills and makes you wonder how you didn't fit the pieces together earlier.

I enjoyed the enemies to lovers to enemies romance aspect to this story, seeing Vespers inner turmoil at being intrigued by Dalca, whilst also wanting to hurt him for taking her father. It isn't rushed, and I feel like we get to know Dalca's true self before anything romantic actually happens, and then BAM they're enemies again. It was so well done, all the little aspects that led to them becoming enemies. Mara weaves her foreshadowing skills and the lore of her world to showcase this relationship & I loved seeing it all unfold. I also liked how, even though Vesper spent a good amount of time with Izamal, nothing romantic was ever eluded too, there was no dreaded love triangle, they stayed friends throughout, and I enjoyed how the author allowed them to get close, to get emotional with each other, without it leading to anything romantic.

The Darkening ends on one hell of a cliffhanger that 100% leaves you desperate for the next book. If you love your reads action packed & emotional, filled with morally grey characters & one epic magic system you should definitely give this one a read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the early access!

I was really looking forward to this book, it was an anticipated read for me. I liked the first 2/3 of the book, even though it was a bit odd and slow in places, it did have me hooked.

However, unfortunately the last third lf this book let me down. As I mentioned before, most of this book didn’t make sense to me - the MC’s actions, her love interest’s behaviour, their actions. And that just went to another level in that last third.

It could have been such a good book, it had potential, but it went downhill in that last third.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I liked the world that Mara has created with this book. Using the Storm as a method of closing off the city means Mara is able to effectively build the world without having to branch out too far. The passages set in the Storm are particularly affecting. Vesper is a strong (if somewhat cliche) character, and I liked the concept of the Wardana and the creation of a rune-based magical mythology. It'll be interesting to see what happens next.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book in return for my honest opinions. Thank you to Sunya Mara and Hodder & Stoughton for giving me the opportunity to read The Darkening before it's release.

Vesper is the daughter of revolutionaries. After her mother is given to the Storm that plagues the city as her punishment for her part in the revolution, Vesper and her father find themselves hiding from the crown.

When her father is taken Vesper will do anything in order to get him back; including infiltrating the Princes forces.

I found myself gripped by the world building within this story; I was fascinated by the way each 'stormtouched' was plagued differently, and I found Vesper to be a brilliant main character. Her goals were clear and I really felt for her as she strived to reunite with her father.

I enjoyed the interactions between characters within this book; particularly the progression of Prince Dalca's portrayal. Each character has their own strengths, and their own great weaknesses and alone they will fail.

I am so eager to see where this series goes next, and I will be grabbing myself a copy as soon as I am able to, because not having this on my shelf feels like a crime!

Vesper is the child of failed revolutionaries. Her mother has been gone for years, caught and given to the Storm that surrounds the city and curses whoever touches it. When her father is captured, to save him she must infiltrate the Wardana, a group of soldier-sorcerers, keep her father's magic book safe (maybe even use it) and befriend a paranoid prince. then she learns there is more to her mother's death...

Descriptions so vivid they sing to your imagination and glowing with exquisite figurative speech, the words compose an emotive tune. This narrative is tinged with the suspense of being discovered and the Storm getting to them. Presenting an interesting magic system and worldbuilding of mesmerizing detail, the mythology flows with creativity.

The 1st person POV is endearing and personal. I adore protagonists that evolve finding their strength within themselves, fighting for justice. Vesper can handle herself in any situation and that is a blessing with all that she must do. That doesn't mean she doesn't make mistakes, but she keeps on trying. Her self-discovery is our self-discovery. Sometimes I just want to applaud her smart mouth. All characters are well written and create their own niche in the story. Izamal is a delight, an instant favorite.

Going undercover to manipulate an enemy is always entertaining, as is to discover new things alongside the protagonist. The unspooling of the plot is done masterfully. So twisty-turvy, the constant revelations playing havoc with emotions, emotions that may betray the characters.

There are some scenes that I wish were shorter, tighter, and others longer, more elaborate. Some things are explained quite extensively, others too little or not at all. These imperfections may as well add to the undeniable beauty of this story.

There is emphasis on how people are not just one thing, we are more complicated than that. This book deals with the essence of fear and what purpose it might fulfill or not. It is about personal freedom and freedom from hardship. Above all about belief in yourself.

Heartwrenching with breathtaking action this is a story where everything is not always as it seems A captivating fantasy with beautiful writing that keeps you guessing. Bring on book two...