Heir of night by Helen Lowe

Book one of The Wall of Night series

When I started reading this book, with it’s ancient evil and aristocracy fighting against the darkness, I thought it would be a very traditional type of epic fantasy. Not that there is anything wrong with that. If written well epic fantasy is awesome. Of course, written poorly it is horrendus.

While there are some “epic fantasy” tropes thrown in to this book, I found Heir of night to be quite original in many ways.

Malian is the heir of the title. Her father is earl of the Night family. One of the nine great houses of the Derai, they have manned the Wall against the darkspawn ever since the Derai arrived on Haarth, although the war reaches much further back than that.

But for over 500 years the darkspawn have been silent, and instead the Derai have started to turn against one another. Betrayals and civil war have sown distrust, now the houses often battle against one another, and even within families those who can wield the “old powers” are forced out, allowed to live within the temple but not the holds of the family.

But now the darkspawn is stirring again, and Malian, as heir of night is about to play an important role, for as the ancient prophecy says, if Night falls, all fall.

Yeah, that blurbification makes it sound quite average. But it is better than that :) It has well written characters and some great world-building.

Of course, it is also the first book in a series and the second isn’t out yet. So that’s a negative!

But if you like your fantasy novels then you should give this a go. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the sequal and I’ll have to give Lowe’s YA books a go if I can.

Other reviews: Bitten by books ; Walker of worlds ; Geeks of doom