Review: Lightfall by Ed Crocker

Lightfall by Ed Crocker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was amazing!  I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley, however I did end up borrowing the audiobook from the library and listened to about half of it while following along with the ARC.  As always, all opinions are my own.

The audiobook has a single narrator, and while I thought she did a wonderful job, I do think this is the type of audiobook that would have benefited from multiple narrators or even a full cast as there are so many characters.  

It has been quite a while since I've come across a unique fantasy book, and this has alot going on to make it so.  This is a tad on the long side, but it crosses several genres and follows a cast of characters to keep the reader invested and wondering "What the heck is going on?"  Some readers are going to hate the way this is structured as it jumps around from character to character within the chapters, while others are going to love it.  I loved it and didn't mind the character jumps as each piece of the story was relevant and eventually leads somewhere.  This follows several of our main characters as main perspective, and there are some random side character and truly random perspectives thrown in throughout.  Each perspective brings something to the table and were clearly thought out.  If you aren't a fan of alot of characters and genre blending they may not be the book for you, but I thought the author did a great job keeping things moving forward and moving each of the intertwining plots organized without giving too much away too quickly.

This has court politics, magic, vampires, sorcerers, werewolves, a murder mystery, and more all rolled up into fantastical tale.  I thought the world building was excellent as this takes place mainly in First Light, home of First Lord Azzuri who is one of our main players. It is home to the vampire race that survived a long ago war.  There are some other locations as well that are well described and the backstory that we get regarding Lightfall and Greyfall are also well told, though I still think there is more information to come.  First Light is full of secrets especially when the First Lord's youngest son turns up dead under mysterious circumstances.  His spymaster and captain of the guard don't seem very invested in uncovering information, when two sorcerers from the desert with no magical abilities show up under the guise of research and a palace maid team up to figure out what is going on.  Sage and Jacob belong to a sorcerer cult dedicated to finding proof that mortals once existed, but they will never admit what they know.  Sam is a maid who has revenge on her mind and wants to be more than a to clean for spoiled lords and ladies for the rest of her life.  The three of them find themselves caught up in an investigation bigger than themselves and on quite the adventure to start a rebellion within the vampire city and to stop the mysterious Greys who are determined to wipe out the vampire race entirely.

I loved this.  I was completely invested in this book.  It felt a bit on the long side, but that is because there are so many characters and complexities to keep track of.   This delivered on all of the things I love in a more epic fantasy.  The pacing was good, there was action and conflict to keep you invested.  I enjoyed the characters and while we have sorcerers, the two main ones don't have magic so we don't really need any explanation of the magic system to complicate things.  There other types of sorcerers but the author does briefly explain their abilities.  He did do a good job of explaining how the types of blood works for the vampires and the commerce system which I thought was really well thought out.  I can't wait for the rest of the series!  I hope to see this book pick up more popularity as the year goes on within the fantasy community.

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