I’m a little rusty on reviewing, so forgive me if I seem a little rambling, I just loved this book and wanted to shout about it.

Sometimes the price of destiny is higher than anyone imagined….

Dark Magic, Hidden Destiny

For three centuries a divine prophecy and a line of warrior queens protected Skala. But the people grew complacent and Erius, a usurper king, claimed his young half sister’s throne.

Now plague and drought stalk the land, war with Skala’s ancient rival Plenimar drains the country’s lifeblood, and to be born female into the royal line has become a death sentence as the king fights to ensure the succession of his only heir, a son. For King Erius the greatest threat comes from his own line — and from Illior’s faithful, who spread the Oracle’s words to a doubting populace.

As noblewomen young and old perish mysteriously, the king’s nephew — his sister’s only child — grows toward manhood. But unbeknownst to the king or the boy, strange, haunted Tobin is the princess’s daughter, given male form by a dark magic to protect her until she can claim her rightful destiny.

Only Tobin’s noble father, two wizards of Illior, and an outlawed forest witch know the truth. Only they can protect young Tobin from a king’s wrath, a mother’s madness, and the terrifying rage of her brother’s demon spirit, determined to avenge his brutal murder….

Goodreads link

I’m in my gothic books era, and I picked this up knowing nothing more than it was often mentioned as such in r/fantasy comments. I ended up loving it, I think it’s really well written and woven. I don’t think I’ve seen another book blend gothic and epic fantasy quite like this, cause it sits very firmly in both genres, even though I wouldn’t have thought they could go together.

For the gothic side, I loved the creepy mountain old castle with the ghosts and women in towers. The atmosphere was excellent, and I would’ve gladly spent a whole trilogy in that dark mood.

Keeping it vague for spoiler reasons, I particularly liked how it explored the hard choices and the victims made along the way to achieving the great hero prophecy. And that was kind of surprising to me, that it went there, repeatedly and in detail, cause from the beginning I was kind of expecting it would just sort of push that suffering to side, shelf it under necessary sacrifice and move on.

I liked the tonal shifts within the story, almost like Tobin was living in the Addams family house, with the rain cloud always above, and everyone else was in ye olde fantasy world. Don’t get me wrong, not to discredit the world, I love when there are multiple types of magic interacting. I liked how first we learned about one kind, and then once we’d built up our knowledge and prejudice we learned about another. Even thought most of the story had such a narrow focus on Tobin’s daily life, the setting still seemed real and lived in. I think having factions disagree on and trying to rewrite history really enhanced that feeling.

The ending part left me feeling like it would be heading into more traditional epic fantasy ground for the rest of they trilogy. I’m curious to continue and see if that’s true. The more epic part sort of reminded me of Inda by Sherwood Smith, which is one of my all time favorites.

I came here for the vibes, and was entirely satisfied, but it’s the characters that are really center stage. The child of prophecy is a precious, sad, little weirdo. But then who wouldn’t be, growing up isolated, surrounded only by grief. I would die for him, but probably also be a little creeped out when he’s talking to ghosts. Another thing I liked was how despite the main character being a kid, it was always an adult book, and there’s always that perspective of “this is not an ok way to grow up”, and even the people who love him, or are trying to protect him, are also failing Tobin. Except for Tobin and his mom, who stepped out of a gothic novel, a lot of the characters are epic fantasy staples, comfortingly familiar, but generally well done, the proud warrior father, the trusty loyal companion, the distant wizard, the shady advisor, the annoying rival. I think that worked very well to anchor the book in both worlds.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this, great mix of familiar and strange, and I strongly recommend checking it out.