Dan Cervi

I’m sure the book reads well in its original language, but the English translation is full of non-sensical sentences and words thrown randomly into sentences that it forces you to re-read them over and over until you give up on understanding. It jolts the reader back to the reality that they are reading a book that (until about halfway though) isn’t really a horror, and to-boot, makes absolutely no sense because the writing is so all over the place and often contradictory. The concept of the story, while unique, seems to point towards a very VERY heavy influence from the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale”. At times, characters (including the horror itself) seem to be characters pulled directly from the podcast with only minor changes made. If you are the type of reader who can look past all the inadequacies and bad writing of a novel to get straight to the meat of the story, kudos to you and you will probably enjoy this book.

This is by far my favorite book series. I love Hayes’ writing style and character and world building, always giving you peeks here and there into the bigger picture without it feeling like forced explanations. Also one of the most unique takes on magic and how it works I have ever seen. Very realistic human reactions and actions in extraordinary circumstances. I highly recommend this series for lovers of deep fantasy worlds and a main character that doesn’t follow your typical heroine role.