Five Lords of Dusk

Everything in this book feels contextless. Genuinely in the first couple of chapters, I was wondering if I’d picked up book 2 of the series instead, but it keeps feeling that way even when new elements are being introduced. Case and point, Dorian and Shye’s relationship. There must have been a lot of off-screen development because I got nothing from them. There was the brief, ‘Oh no, he’s hot/they’re hot,’ then boom love, ‘obviously, I’d give up my whole life and world to be with you.’ I barely had a sense of who these characters were and what they wanted, much less what they saw in each other.
Shye, as a character, was directionless and kind of clueless in a way that didn’t seem purposeful to the narrative. He went along with whatever was put in front of him and, yes, he felt some pull of destiny, but that was just another contrivance moving him around.

Five Lords of Dusk has an interesting take on magic and the fae, the characters are interesting, and overall the plot was good. The prologue attempts the cold introduction to a new world, with middling success: it is mostly confusing and doesn't make any sense until well into the main story, which honestly made the book difficult to get into. Once past that, however, the plot and characters were engaging enough to enjoy. Sometimes the plot seems to override the personalities of the characters, and it felt as though the journey to Dusk was meant to be longer than it was, with more time for the characters to interact and grow relationships. This added to the plot-over-personality issue, as some of the interactions felt like there should have been more time to develop reasoning first. Overall, however, the book was a decent read and I enjoyed it.

In struggled a bit with how this is written. I'm all for organically introducing a fantasy world, but sometimes aspects need to be shared more directly. Since this was absent, it made some things a little confusing and difficult to follow. This book does have amazing potential though and I'm sure the right audience is out there. Unfortuanatley it just wasn't working for me how I hoped it would.

Great story. Held my attention throughout. It has earned a place in my top 15 books I've read this year.

DNF due to crippling illness.