Ever Darkening by Janeal Falor

“The evil feeling surrounding the Malryx always felt like this entire forest does. Could it be- Could it possibly be that without people to be evil, nature is turning evil?”

This book comes out Jan 28th and is a fantasy novel about Kaylyn. Before I talk about the book itself, I just want to say how gorgeous this cover is. It is stunning and it is definitely a book I would pick up if I saw it on a shelf.

Kaylyn has trained her whole life to defeat the forces of evil in her world called Malryx. The beginning of this book finds Kaylyn in the final battle against the leader of the Malryx. Kaylyn successfully defeats them and the celebrations begin. However, it is not long before an unfamiliar force threatens another village and Kaylyn and her friends must learn to overcome this new “evil”.

Even though the cover is gorgeous, I had some issues with this book. This was an incredibly short book, it is under 200 pages in paperback. That was one of my main issues with this book. Since it was so short many aspects of a good fantasy were left out. There was little to no world building and that frustrated me. We are thrown into this world with Kaylyn and it is never explained who the Malryx are or even what Kaylyn’s group of Zophas are. There were many new terms in this book where the reader was left on their own to figure out what they meant. I would have really liked the book to be longer with more expanding and explaining of the world.  Just another 30 pages with world building and explanations would have made this book more complete.

Even though I really struggled with understanding the world that Falor has created at first, the pacing of this book was good. The plot was constantly moving forward. I also really appreciated the use of the first person. Many other books do not use this POV and it is refreshing to have something different. I also really appreciated the questions this book raised about the balance of good and evil in the world. It was interesting to think about a world where there was no evil, where Kaylyn had destroyed every ounce of evil. I also really loved the descriptions of the forest and the setting once they were on their quest. Some of that stuff was really creepy.

Overall, this was a quick read that has a lot of potential. For me personally, it fell short of my expectations. I really wanted more about the world Kaylyn lived in.

*I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*


♛ ♛ ♛