The Lich Before the Darkness
Jun. 1st, 2025 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAn author contacted me recently to ask if I'd read his first book and review it on my YouTube channel - and I thought, why not?
The Lich Before the Darkness by Timothy Stormcrow is a fun ride, set in a world very like our own, but where supernatural creatures (eg vampires, werewolves, revenants, etc) are fairly common and living in the open.
The main protagonist, Aisling, is recruited to join a government department tasked with investigating supernatural issues and helping people solve problems they're having either with being or interacting with supernatural creatures.
The book largely follows Aisling in her training and first few missions, with other sections following Maeve, a recent revenant setting up a monster-hunting business, and Eric, a young man with strange powers that have a significant impact on future events.
The writing is generally good (barring some persistent surface issues with punctuation and a few scattered typos), I liked the characters, there's a lot of really good descriptive detail and, overall, it was an entertaining read. There's some good setup for the story continuing in future volumes, and I largely enjoyed it.
It does have some worldbuilding issues, though, and the plot cohesion is a bit lacking. It takes over half the book to get to the main plot events, where the three different narrative threads converge - and then that doesn't really go anywhere and everything fractures again and goes back to largely episodic sections that don't connect.
It kept me engaged throughout, though, and I'd be interested to read more - especially since this first book ended very abruptly, almost mid-scene.
The Lich Before the Darkness by Timothy Stormcrow is a fun ride, set in a world very like our own, but where supernatural creatures (eg vampires, werewolves, revenants, etc) are fairly common and living in the open.
The main protagonist, Aisling, is recruited to join a government department tasked with investigating supernatural issues and helping people solve problems they're having either with being or interacting with supernatural creatures.
The book largely follows Aisling in her training and first few missions, with other sections following Maeve, a recent revenant setting up a monster-hunting business, and Eric, a young man with strange powers that have a significant impact on future events.
The writing is generally good (barring some persistent surface issues with punctuation and a few scattered typos), I liked the characters, there's a lot of really good descriptive detail and, overall, it was an entertaining read. There's some good setup for the story continuing in future volumes, and I largely enjoyed it.
It does have some worldbuilding issues, though, and the plot cohesion is a bit lacking. It takes over half the book to get to the main plot events, where the three different narrative threads converge - and then that doesn't really go anywhere and everything fractures again and goes back to largely episodic sections that don't connect.
It kept me engaged throughout, though, and I'd be interested to read more - especially since this first book ended very abruptly, almost mid-scene.
