Not interested in watching my video review, then look below for the major bullet points.
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Rating: 4 out of 5
Genre: Scifi/Fantasy
Technical Reasons to Read it: Great Magic System, Dark, and Excellent Lyrical Writing
Hello friends!
In this blog, I’m reviewing One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig. As usual, the first half of the review will be spoiler-free, and more about my overall thoughts, whereas, for the second half, I’ll be doing a technical review. There will be spoilers there to help you strengthen your craft.
I loved the first half of this book. I thought that it was dark, gritty, and I loved the unique magic system. For someone who reads a lot of fantasy like me, magic systems become repetitive. There’s nothing wrong with them, writers tend to get influenced by what’s already been written. It’s the books that take magic and go, hmmmmm, how am I going to mix this up? How am I going to make the magic exist? I love that in Foundryside words manipulate the magic. That’s super interesting to me. And it's the same way here with One Dark Window.
I would call this a dark fantasy with a romance twist to it. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it romantasy, which is why I’m getting a little hesitant on the term romanticy. Why can't stories just have some love in them? Why do we suddenly have to make it a romance plot? Unlike The Sins of Their Bones, which felt like rom in a fantasy setting, this feels like there was romance as a side plot to a fantasy book. So if you're going in as a romance reader looking for a romance book, this might not be the book for you. However, there is a strong romance element. If you don’t like romance in your fantasy books, then this might not be for you either.
The beginning was strong for me. And then I kept reading. And I quickly, quickly lost interest. Very, very quickly. I know I gave this book a decent rating, as you can see from my Goodreads account. I gave it four stars I like One Dark Window, but I was bored halfway through. I was not looking forward to reading my page count every day, and I just didn't have an interest to know what happening.
Kait (04:27.656)
So ultimately, my issues came down to my attachment to the characters. I was not for Elspeth. There was nothing wrong with her. I just didn't relate to her. I didn't find her story to be super interesting. We follow the traditional thing of, oh, I'm a girl trying to hide something, and I, woe is me, don't know how to fix it, but I'm special, blah, blah, blah. And then you have the rugged man trying to fight the whole system and says, okay, well, let's team up together. I just... The story started to become very predictable and the ways that the magic was extremely unique, the story on the flip side started to become very predictable.
The story feels obvious and it took the protagonist a long time to figure out something the reader knew at page one.
Now look away if you don’t want spoilers.
Because here we be entering the technical review.
Rant time! I’m tired of stories ending with a character being lost and needing to be saved. It happened in Divine Rivals and it happens here. Lakes Edge I believe also did it if I'm naming the title correctly. This was another one where we lost someone and oh we now need to go save them. It sets the reader up to feel like they know the entire plot of the second book.
Normally, especially with female-led protagonists or romance books, it’s the male protagonist or love interest who goes missing. In this case, it’s Elspeth who loses her mind. Essentially, the monster takes over. As we've all predicted, that should not be too much of a spoiler. If you've read the book, it's literally projected from the start. Anyway, so she gets taken over by the nightmare and he can take control of her body. Now he’s become an extremely forward-facing character in the story. He’s probably my favorite character, the Nightmare, of the entire book, which is why I'm interested in reading book two. Now, her being taken over by him is a little bit different than say someone going missing because now we're given a new character in her place, which is the Nightmare.
So I found it very interesting at the very end when the narration was mixed up and we got the Nightmare and Elspeth slips away. I'm not complaining because Gillig made it work. There was a seamless flow. And that's the key. You don't have to stick to the same POV if you can have a good flow and gently lead the reader to follow you into the new POV or into the new first person, third person, whatever.
Happy Reading!
Love,
Kait