Description/Blurb:

“The Gloaming was worse than the grave…”

Or so Tryst believed when he banished the former prince to this secret and brutal exile. Now Tryst sits on the throne of Valemidas. He feasts with nobles and prepares an army to conquer the world.

But things are never as stable as they seem. Old loyalties remain. The people of Valemidas groan under Tryst’s heavy yoke and his network of spies. While the seeds of rebellion are planted, Tryst’s own family is divided. His sister has ambitions exceeding her brother’s, and their half-sister wants vengeance for the disappeared prince she loved. No one escapes the Gloaming, but perhaps the fallen prince is different. What would happen if a man emerged from a place worse than the grave?

Alliances will crumble, battles will rage, and souls will transform in the Gloaming.

Review 2 of 5 Stars

I was provided with a copy of this book by the author in return for an honest review. I had started to read this book once before, but couldn’t get into it. I put it down for a really long time, but it was at the top of the list when I was clearing out those books on my list that I had not yet reviewed simply because it was the oldest one on the list. So I decided to settle in for a good read and give it a chance.

Light in the Gloaming started out pretty well in the Gloaming, which is an advanced dungeon. In fact the way they dropped people in was very Chronicles of Riddick. I actually thought about Riddick almost as soon as the book started in the Gloaming. Don’t worry though. It’s not a Riddick remake. It only follows that path with regard to the start of the story and it does not continue in that vein. I will say that there was a rather unrealistic escape made at the beginning. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. Despite all of that, I would have been interested in learning more about the struggles of those who had been cast off from society to inhabit the place, but the majority of the book isn’t spent in the Gloaming. It’s spent in the outer world.

The story was okay, but I didn’t really “feel” anything for the characters. I wasn’t invested in them or the world building. There were some interesting parts to the story, but for the most part it read like a watered down Game of Thrones book with a good helping of religious philosophies thrown in. The good part is that I didn’t have any problem finishing the book so it’s not that it is poorly written, but I did find some typos in the version I was provided by the author (I have to put a disclaimer here because it’s been quite some time since the author requested I review the book and there may have been updates since then with regard to proofing).

Tryst is the bad guy, but he’s only so frightening. Ramzi is supposed to be a bad guy, but once again he didn’t feel too frightening. I didn’t get the true feeling of dread you ought to from the bad guy. Andor is the good guy, but most days he is pretty inconsistent as a character and seemed to just be going through the motions. I really thought there should have been more time spent developing Andor as a character since he’s the hero of the story. In my opinion, the best characters in the book were Wren and Jon who I did enjoy reading about. They were the only two characters that came across as real people to me or that interested me enough to want to know what they were up to not only during the book, but afterwards.

So the final rundown is that the book was okay. The writing was okay. There weren’t a bunch of typos and I didn’t have a hard time getting through it based on the writing. In the end though, this book left me with a kind of blah feeling. I wasn’t excited about the story and have no interest in the continuing tale. I read a lot of books of this general type so I don’t think it had anything to do with the genre. That’s it for January. I hope everyone has a great weekend. I’ll be back with more book reviews next week.

There were some good parts to the story. I was very interested in the Gloaming and what took place there given its very dystopian feel. It’s possible that the next book delves into that more, but I doubt I’ll be reading the second book in the series as I still wasn’t really interested in this book even at the end.