The Gathering Dark by Leigh Bardugo

I vowed to myself a while back that I wouldn't read any more books featuring a teenage girl with an unhealthy fixation for a vampire, were-wolf, demon, fallen angel or any other mythical beast or humanoid. I'd read enough, had enough, and could rehearse the hackneyed plot lines in my sleep.

And I held true to that vow until I was sent The Gathering Dark.

Now to be fair The Gathering Dark doesn't quite fall into the 'paranormal romance' category. For starters, it's set in another world where there are humans and Grisha - semi-magical humans with individual special powers - and our heroine, Alina,turns out to be one of these magical creatures herself. In fact, to start with, I was more struck by similarities with another recent huge hit, The Hunger Games. You have the same peasant girl who gets dragged from her poor surroundings and plunged into a fantastically rich and priveleged environment, only to have to fight for her very survival shortly thereafter. You have the same fascination with food, clothing, hair and make-up. (Seriously, are teenage girls that shallow?) And you have the same ordinary guy love interest that gets left behind.


And there we were until about half way along. And then it all sort of changed. First there was a brief flirtation with Twilight territory as Alina struggled to decide between good old Mal, or the dangerously sexy Darkling. But then she starts to see the truth, the excitement levels increase and the book becomes the page turner that you had hoped it would be before the clothing, hair and make-up got in the way. From about page 200 on it's difficult to put the book down. There's violent action, then moments of true tenderness, and all set against a richly depicted imaginary world.

There's no doubt that Leigh Bardugo has created a fascinating world here and it defines the book's uniqueness. Maybe the similarities with other books are unavoidable in the current economic climate. I can see that something that could be described as The Hunger Games meets Twilight might have the dollar signs rolling in the publiher's eyes. But Bardugo does, somehow, rise above this and I'm intrigued to see what happens in the next book in the trilogy.

 The lovely people at Orion Books provided this review copy. If you would like to get your own please click below and Amazon will kindly send a small contribution towards maintaining this blog.