Deborah's Reviews > The Outer Darkness

I received a complementary copy of THE OUTER DARKNESS by M.V. Prindle for the purpose of reviewing it for #SPFBOX for the team created by Cassidy @coverswithcassidy.

THE OUTER DARKNESS is set in a world surrounded by a Darkness held back by the Light. Within the Darkness are demons, fallen gods, creatures, and the risen dead that would bring death and destruction if not for that Light… and the Light has begun to fail.

Abraxes is living in a bottle, but when a god asks him to steal a sacred object, this sets him on a new journey. Anaya is a monk of the Iron Way, sent on a quest by her dying master. Merrick is a member of the royal guard investigating a massacre and scenes that have him questioning his fate. Tallyn is a fierce assassin working for the Shadowhunters. As the world faces its potential destruction, each must find their path and make decisions for how they will face it.

I went into this book with really high hopes and I’m happy to report that I wound up enjoying my time with it! The idea of the darkness surrounding a world of light and the pressure of that dividing wall breaking down really had me intrigued and I think that the concept of the world really held up to my hopes for it.

We are following a truly huge cast of characters and a lot of points of view throughout the book. While those mentioned in the synopsis carry a big portion of the story, there are a number more who get significant POV page time and a few more who get a few chapters here and there. This is a story that has a very broad scope, so the number of POVs makes sense in the story setup, but I did find myself getting a bit lost as to who was who and where each storyline was left off when last we saw that character. This got better as I got further into the book, but even to the very end of the book, I was using my Kindle to search for a couple of names to refresh myself on who was who.

In terms of character development, I did think that the character work was well done on our main characters. Each of the main characters did have a distinct voice and perspective that really helped to distinguish them. I also think the author did a good job of putting some reminders into the text to help us contextualize who the characters were, especially in the beginning as we were first getting to know them.

When it comes to secondary and background characters, I felt like some were fleshed out more than others. Each POV starts off very separate with its own cast of characters to keep track of. In addition to that, each winds up talking about different aspects of the government and religion, different gods and demons. I did want a bit more fleshing out when it came to some of the gods in particular and what their motivations were with stepping into the humans’ lives.

The plot for this book was intricately done and I think it was generally well done. I really liked seeing how the storylines of our separate characters built up and then how they came to weave together further into the book. I did really appreciate the darkness of this story and that there are real stakes for the characters on their journey. This is not a book for the faint of heart when it comes to gore and death as the bloody body count gets large!

As I have mentioned, there are a lot of plot threads in terms of different gods, religions, peoples, and political maneuverings and I did at times find myself a bit confused as to how things fit together. While this was a lengthy book at nearly 700 pages, I think there were elements that could have been fleshed out a bit more to help me to draw connections.

I am a very world-building driven reader and there was so much for me to digest and appreciate in this world. The creatures that the author developed were really interesting and I thought that they way they came into the story was really well done. The interplay of darkness and light and the different way characters perceive these elements were very interesting.

There were a few different ideas of magic and the world in general going on in here from varied prophesies and access to different elements of the spiritual world. I think some of this could have been a bit more fleshed out for my personal taste. I think getting a bit more of a discussion about varied ideas between our characters from different backgrounds could have helped me solidify how things overlapped or perhaps did not. Quite a bit of the world-building gets the answers I wanted very late in the book. We had quite a bit of explanation of what different elements meant around the 75% mark and I personally would have preferred getting that information sprinkled in more throughout the text.

I really thought that the author’s writing was fantastic! The action scenes had me gripped and the tension was built up well when it needed to be. As I’ve mentioned this is a pretty bloody and gory book at times and even there, the author manages to make some of these descriptions beautiful (I remember one line in particular about flies pirouetting over a scene of gore that stood out to me). I think the descriptive language struck the right note of being well done while not overdone.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and I definitely will be reading this author again in the future. There were some elements, particularly the large cast of POV characters to track, that didn’t entirely work the best for me, but in the end I am really glad that I read this!