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DRC Review: Lightfall by Ed Crocker

Writer's picture: Story EaterStory Eater

Release date:  14 January 2025

Rating:  3.75/5

Synopsis:  An epic fantasy of vampires, werewolves and sorcerers, Lightfall is the debut novel of Ed Crocker, for fans of Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire and Richard Swan’s The Justice of Kings.


No humans here. Just immortals: their politics, their feuds—and their long buried secrets.


For centuries, vampires freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night. The survivors fled to the last vampire city of First Light, where the rules are simple. If you’re poor, you drink weak blood. If you’re nobility, you get the good stuff. And you can never, ever leave.


Palace maid Sam has had enough of these rules, and she’s definitely had enough of cleaning the bedpans of the lords who enforce them. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and she finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords. Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.


There’s just one problem. What began as a murder investigation has uncovered a vast conspiracy by the ruling elite, and now Sam must find the truth before she becomes another victim. If she can avoid getting murdered, she might just live forever.

 

Review


The basic premise of Lightfall gets all the stars from me, but the scope of the narrative and the execution didn’t correlate well with one another.  I love the noir feel from the start, the post-apocalyptic setting, and the mystery—the book reads like a combination of several familiar and popular stories combined:  Daybreakers, The Starless Crown, Shannara, The Alienist, and a bit of The Longing of Lone Wolves.  The post-apocalyptic, post-human setting drew me in, and while I enjoyed much of it, there were some things about it that made it hard for me to absolutely love.


World building really takes the cake here.  I love stories set far in the future where humans are (presumably) extinct, and the beings left behind after them live longer lives and fight deadlier quarrels.  The story opens with a monster hook:  a powerful vampire lord must investigate his own son’s murder.  Through this investigation, readers will meet a slew of characters, each somehow connected to this murder and other, deeper (of course) plots of power upheavals, scandal, and mysteries long obsessed over that will finally find answers.


Crocker’s strength for this debut lies in the world building and character development.  I’ve read a few post-human dystopian stories before (i.e., Brooks’ Shannara series and Pecherczyk’s Season of the Wolf, et al. series), and this one adds to that repertoire quite well.  The atmosphere builds a dark mood to frame the story, and in combination with the murder mystery, readers have quite the mashup of fantasy, sci-fi, detective noir, and a smidge of romance to look forward to.


The main, and huge, drawback for me stems from story framing.  Crocker tells the story of Lightfall from multiple points of view—all first person.  I find first person narration works well for me with maybe one or two characters tops, but readers will have to jump around among at least five here.  The author labels each character’s part, which certainly makes it easier to follow, but my brain doesn’t focus on the story well with all the changing of perspective.  With as intricately plotted a novel as this, readers may have a difficult time juggling all the points of view.  I had to go back and look at the start of the chapter sometimes to remind myself whom I was following, despite the chapter headings.


I look forward to the rest of the Everlands Trilogy, which I will definitely add to the TBR as it comes out.


My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the DRC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.



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