He’s hardened by war, by experiences with elves, by being let down by the monarch and by people in general. You know when you’re watching a movie and all the characters say the MC has a reputation and you expect them to live up to it, but their actions don’t really follow through? Yeah… The one issue I stumbled across - though quite late in the story - was a logic issue. It’s a thicc book, because it’s a thicc story to tell. But the size of it isn’t a knock against it. It’s not the kinda book most people could knock out on a weekend, but for you faster readers, maybe a week if you really dig in. I like to linger in the scenes and experience them in immersive, imaginative detail but whereas a normal book would take me a week at most, this one took me the good part of a month. The reason it took me a while because it’s a thicc book. In fact, it’s exactly my preferred writing style: Minimalistic, with small splashes of description woven throughout to reinforce the imagery rather than beat you over the head with it. This book does not suffer from info dumps. Not because the pace was slow or anything.

It did take me a long time to get through this book. And my withered, blackened, horror-loving heart soaked it all in like a thirsty little bitch. It’s dark and wrong and paints the world in pain and horror. But these elves are vicious, bloodthirsty creatures.

I mean, of course it isn’t - typical fantasies aren’t dripping in homoeroticism. More questions, more captivating characters, more events to send my pulse into a gallop. His prickly attitude and massive balls sucked me into the story, and at every turn where I expected it to yeet me back out of the immersive experience, instead, it offered more. Instead, what I got was this immensely interesting MC, Niko. Expecting that cringe factor, or some stiff dialogue, or over-explaining to rub against my already frayed reader nerves.īut that moment never came. After about 7 or 8 terrible horror samples I cracked this open, expecting it to disappoint me like the others. It was one of the dozens of samples I’d collected during my search for decent M/M horror.

I don’t read a lot of fantasy, so I started this book on a whim.

King of the Dark by Ariana Nash