★★★★✩

As part of the Neverland Blog Tour
for The Darkness comes by Bruce Blake, I received a review copy of the book, so a big thank you to Jenny. I gave this book 4 stars, and am excited for the next installment of the series! My review is spoiler free but may mention things from the first book. Find my review for the first book here.

The Darkness Comes is the second book in Bruce Blake’s The Small
Gods series. We continue to follow the stories of the numerous characters from the first installment, each of them heading towards their own individual goal.

The first book drew me in from the very start, and this second installment managed to pull me straight into it’s pages yet again with an action packed prologue which spilled blood straight from the off, preparing me for an exciting journey alongside the characters. I was pleased to see more action scenes throughout the book, more fatalies along the characters’ journeys and more tense moments within the chapters; all of these made for a much more exciting read.

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Bruce Blake did a magnificent job laying the groundwork in the first book, and followed it by doing a brilliant job with character development in The Darkness Comes. I have started to truly become invested in the characters that were already in existence, and I adored the new additions as well. They were all so well fleshed out, and their distinct personalities leapt off the page and onto my skin, making me cringe, chuckle and empathise.

I found a couple of typos in  the text, but nothing to affect the storyline, and otherwise, I couldn’t fault Bruce Blake’s writing in the slightest. It was enjoyable and compelling, and Blake has no difficulty describing the aesthetics of land and scenery, really allowing the reader to build pictures in their mind. I love the fact that the narrative is driven from the point of view of the characters involved in the story itself, and each of them hold a distinct personality and voice.

The well thought out and developed world that Blake has created became so much more interesting as the tension builds within the individual paths of each character, and their seemingly unconnected stories begin to cross and tangle within one another.

After being left with unanswered questions, characters lives on the line, and foreshadowing of big things to happen, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the next installment, and would recommend this book to those who love historical fiction with a dash of fantasy!

“A Small God shall fall so the Small Gods might rise.“