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The Madness Method #2
A Dark So Deep
Beloved prince, rebel, traitor…
…Tarik brought his country to the brink of war.
Can he now bring peace before he loses his own sanity?
With Hayli in the grips of the Science Ministry and his allies in hiding, Tarik must wrestle his own demons before he forgets his reason for fighting.
Some believe he is the key to defusing the hostilities.
Some believe he is the only one who can save the mages from annihilation…
…but at what cost?
While Tarik fights to protect his people, Hayli must defend her life and her sanity long enough to escape her captors. But can she ever truly be free?
As the lines between loyalty and betrayal blur, only one question matters.
If the price for peace is too high…
…is war the only option?
You’ll love this dark fantasy, because war is all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
…Tarik brought his country to the brink of war.
Can he now bring peace before he loses his own sanity?
With Hayli in the grips of the Science Ministry and his allies in hiding, Tarik must wrestle his own demons before he forgets his reason for fighting.
Some believe he is the key to defusing the hostilities.
Some believe he is the only one who can save the mages from annihilation…
…but at what cost?
While Tarik fights to protect his people, Hayli must defend her life and her sanity long enough to escape her captors. But can she ever truly be free?
As the lines between loyalty and betrayal blur, only one question matters.
If the price for peace is too high…
…is war the only option?
You’ll love this dark fantasy, because war is all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
624 pages, Hardcover
First published November 20, 2015
10 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
J. Leigh Bralick
14 books155 followersJ. Leigh Bralick is a fantasy author by day and an RN by night...or vice versa, depending on the day. She originally got her bachelor's in medieval history and MA in political philosophy, but decided on a career change when she realized she didn't want to teach, and no one was going to pay her exorbitant sums of money to use her learning to invent fantasy worlds. (She still holds out hope on that score, however.)
After growing up all around the country as a military brat, she now lives in Dallas, TX with a crazy menagerie of animals and more books than she legitimately has space for. When she isn't writing or working, she enjoys ballet and Krav Maga, hiking, and sharing gory ER stories with her friends.
Find her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jleighbralick
After growing up all around the country as a military brat, she now lives in Dallas, TX with a crazy menagerie of animals and more books than she legitimately has space for. When she isn't writing or working, she enjoys ballet and Krav Maga, hiking, and sharing gory ER stories with her friends.
Find her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jleighbralick
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 16, 2016
There aren’t too many books out there that I wait most (im)patiently for. A Dark So Deep was one of them. The sequel to The Madness Project, Bralick’s opening gambit in a fusion of fantasy and steampunk, this follow-up brings readers right back to the brink of war in Brinmark, the capital city of Cavnal. Prince Tarik aka the mage called Shade stands in the middle of an ever deepening political intrigue and resulting chasm between the government and its peoples. Is he meant to start or stop a war? The question looms large throughout the book.
I hadn’t realized just how Brinmark-starved I was until ADSD came out, nor just how much I missed Tarik, Hayli and the gang, the city, the magic, the steam and the mechanisms. Most of all I missed the language. Bralick’s mind is a genius, bringing world-building to a new imaginative high. The various accents and linguistic flourishes are all incredibly original, and invasive like a catchy commercial tune except I’m not singing some company’s jingle but falling into a vocal and mental syntax of another world entirely. It’s invasive in a good way, as a testament to Bralick’s storytelling and commitment to delivering a story that engages the brain wholly. Reading The Madness Project, and now A Dark So Deep, I was fully transported from reality to another world entirely as details most authors overlook have been well considered and worked into the storytelling and played upon with seemingly cunning ease.
The book opens with immediate action and stays in a keyed up, page-turning plot pace throughout, throwing us right back in amongst the street rats and mages as they take refuge at an abandoned smelter at the edge of town, their previous home at the Hole forfeited as a loss after being raided at the end of The Madness Project. Hayli is still being held captive by Dr. Kippler, her mind deviously being toyed with as a new threat on the anti-mage front rears its duplicitous head in the persons of Andon Vrey and Miss Farrady. Tarik, ever torn between self and duty (perceived or assigned by blood lineage, though Cavnal or Istian is still up for grabs) is determined to rescue Hayli while the rest of his crew is distrustful of the girl they believe betrayed them to the ministry/crown.
A good first chunk of the book is dedicated to Hayli’s rescue with Tarik continuing to explore his magic. However, the harder Tarik pushes the more his magic fractures causing him to eventually lose control over it entirely. He journeys deeper into the enigmas of what magic is to a mage just as Hayli’s brain is toyed with for the same purpose by forces that would understand such things for entirely different reasons. Bralick delivers a stunning work of mind-bending writing in giving us Hayli’s perspective as she endures lies and manipulation, so convincing that she had me guessing for a good long while, as unable to decipher between the truth and the lies as Hayli. That, for someone who prefers a high level of control in their mind, was a startlingly scary jaunt into what insanity must feel like.
Correspondingly, I thought Andon Vrey and Miss Farrady were some of the most dastardly villains I’ve read yet. Even now the character Andon, his history and purpose and true involvement in the ministry plots remains a mystery that lingers, ever piquing the interest, Miss Farrady close on his heels. Bralick doesn’t give us much about them beyond the periphery of what Hayli and/or Tarik knows about them which titillates for future books and possible explanations.
Even more, chock full of political intrigues, manipulations, revelations, and unexpected plot twists, A Dark So Deep not only follows The Madness Project, it gives us characters that have changed markedly over the course of the story, growing and developing as real people would if experiencing a serious set of dire, even lethal circumstances. Layers of delicious storytelling intertwine to weave a rich, intricate, continually expanding and deepening plot that is still beginning to unfold with a promise of at least three more books to follow in the series.
I want to wrap Brinmark and its inhabitants around me like an insulating blanket, adopt the city slang patois and go running around in the dark with people who can walk through walls, read minds, influence emotions, change faces, start fires, teleport, heal, and a score of other unnamed abilities. I want to fight the good fight alongside these brave souls who fight not for some world-changing cause, but for the right to be themselves, and use the gifts they were born with. Against needless oppression born of greed, of power lust, of malicious intolerance. In today’s world fraught with similar narrow-minded perceptions, it’s Bralick’s brand of fiction that dares to draw striking, thought-provoking parallels.
Fans of The Madness Project will not be disappointed with A Dark So Deep. I fell even more in love with this world and its peoples with this second volume in the series. My need for the third installment is as great as my anticipation of the next book in the Game of Thrones series, and that’s saying something.
I hadn’t realized just how Brinmark-starved I was until ADSD came out, nor just how much I missed Tarik, Hayli and the gang, the city, the magic, the steam and the mechanisms. Most of all I missed the language. Bralick’s mind is a genius, bringing world-building to a new imaginative high. The various accents and linguistic flourishes are all incredibly original, and invasive like a catchy commercial tune except I’m not singing some company’s jingle but falling into a vocal and mental syntax of another world entirely. It’s invasive in a good way, as a testament to Bralick’s storytelling and commitment to delivering a story that engages the brain wholly. Reading The Madness Project, and now A Dark So Deep, I was fully transported from reality to another world entirely as details most authors overlook have been well considered and worked into the storytelling and played upon with seemingly cunning ease.
The book opens with immediate action and stays in a keyed up, page-turning plot pace throughout, throwing us right back in amongst the street rats and mages as they take refuge at an abandoned smelter at the edge of town, their previous home at the Hole forfeited as a loss after being raided at the end of The Madness Project. Hayli is still being held captive by Dr. Kippler, her mind deviously being toyed with as a new threat on the anti-mage front rears its duplicitous head in the persons of Andon Vrey and Miss Farrady. Tarik, ever torn between self and duty (perceived or assigned by blood lineage, though Cavnal or Istian is still up for grabs) is determined to rescue Hayli while the rest of his crew is distrustful of the girl they believe betrayed them to the ministry/crown.
A good first chunk of the book is dedicated to Hayli’s rescue with Tarik continuing to explore his magic. However, the harder Tarik pushes the more his magic fractures causing him to eventually lose control over it entirely. He journeys deeper into the enigmas of what magic is to a mage just as Hayli’s brain is toyed with for the same purpose by forces that would understand such things for entirely different reasons. Bralick delivers a stunning work of mind-bending writing in giving us Hayli’s perspective as she endures lies and manipulation, so convincing that she had me guessing for a good long while, as unable to decipher between the truth and the lies as Hayli. That, for someone who prefers a high level of control in their mind, was a startlingly scary jaunt into what insanity must feel like.
Correspondingly, I thought Andon Vrey and Miss Farrady were some of the most dastardly villains I’ve read yet. Even now the character Andon, his history and purpose and true involvement in the ministry plots remains a mystery that lingers, ever piquing the interest, Miss Farrady close on his heels. Bralick doesn’t give us much about them beyond the periphery of what Hayli and/or Tarik knows about them which titillates for future books and possible explanations.
Even more, chock full of political intrigues, manipulations, revelations, and unexpected plot twists, A Dark So Deep not only follows The Madness Project, it gives us characters that have changed markedly over the course of the story, growing and developing as real people would if experiencing a serious set of dire, even lethal circumstances. Layers of delicious storytelling intertwine to weave a rich, intricate, continually expanding and deepening plot that is still beginning to unfold with a promise of at least three more books to follow in the series.
I want to wrap Brinmark and its inhabitants around me like an insulating blanket, adopt the city slang patois and go running around in the dark with people who can walk through walls, read minds, influence emotions, change faces, start fires, teleport, heal, and a score of other unnamed abilities. I want to fight the good fight alongside these brave souls who fight not for some world-changing cause, but for the right to be themselves, and use the gifts they were born with. Against needless oppression born of greed, of power lust, of malicious intolerance. In today’s world fraught with similar narrow-minded perceptions, it’s Bralick’s brand of fiction that dares to draw striking, thought-provoking parallels.
Fans of The Madness Project will not be disappointed with A Dark So Deep. I fell even more in love with this world and its peoples with this second volume in the series. My need for the third installment is as great as my anticipation of the next book in the Game of Thrones series, and that’s saying something.
May 13, 2018
I'd like to thank J. Leigh Bralick for writing this incredible book that mercilessly ripped my heart right out of my chest, squeezed endless tears out of it, then shoved it back in. But seriously, this was one of the most brilliantly agonizing books that I've ever read, and so wonderfully unique to all those other books about teenagers saving the world. Bonus points for the accuracy of the title, for it was a dark book indeed. In the beginning, we're hurtled right back into the story, and as the mad plot twists and turns, there's nothing for you to do but hold on for dear life. The beautiful and descriptive writing; the intense plot; the admirable love of Tarik and Hayli (thank you so, so much for that by the way); and the lovable characters all make this series such a worth while read. I look forward to the upcoming books in the hope that the author will be a little easier on the poor characters, though I doubt it.
March 2, 2016
Amazing, riveting, magnetic!
April 30, 2016
Talk about mind games. The author picks right up where she left with seamless finesse. I was rooting for Hayli to hang on, I was demanding that Shade hang on as well. I took this book with me to the caucuses, and I couldn't even be bothered to pay attention when they were trying to win the last dude over to one side to avoid a coin toss - you'd think I'd pay attention to that. Oh no, I was more concerned with Tarik and his drive to always put himself in danger. I also snapped at my husband to be quiet when I was 97% done with the book and you will KNOW why. And when it was over, and I emerged from the world I felt such a part of, I blinked, not quite understanding where I was or how the book couldn't be real. I have to know what happens next.
February 1, 2016
When you read one of the Madness Method books, you're right there, on the ground (or in the air ;)) with the characters; the realism is stunning. Bralick's conceptual magic is astounding, complex, and full of surprises, and makes this one of the most creative fantasy series out there. The tension between magic and science in this second book of the series is especially compelling, as are the character developments, as always.
November 27, 2015
Review to follow.
December 29, 2018
An exciting adventure
A young man heir to the throne finds out he is not the boy he thought he was. The adventures of Tarik the crown Prince takes us on a journey full of adventure, hate and caring. A young boy has to face the perils of leaving his pampered life and live on the cold streets and recognize he is different a mage. He bands with a group of others who have faced poverty and neglect to go after a Ministry trieing to over power the throne. An exciting page turner for those who like supernatural and a thriller.
A young man heir to the throne finds out he is not the boy he thought he was. The adventures of Tarik the crown Prince takes us on a journey full of adventure, hate and caring. A young boy has to face the perils of leaving his pampered life and live on the cold streets and recognize he is different a mage. He bands with a group of others who have faced poverty and neglect to go after a Ministry trieing to over power the throne. An exciting page turner for those who like supernatural and a thriller.
January 19, 2019
I can't wait to see what happens next in the lives of Haily and T arik
I didn't think I. would like the first book, but as I kept reading I got engrossed in the story and had trouble putting it down. I can't wait to read book three.
I didn't think I. would like the first book, but as I kept reading I got engrossed in the story and had trouble putting it down. I can't wait to read book three.
April 16, 2024
Honestly, I love the story and how the characters actually develop and change.
March 14, 2025
Awesome
It kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't put it down.
I love it! Can't wait to find out what happens next.
It kept me on the edge of my seat. I couldn't put it down.
I love it! Can't wait to find out what happens next.
November 20, 2015
*I received a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This does not have an effect on my review.
**This review also appears on my blog.
***May contain spoilers if you haven't read The Madness Project
The madness turns dark as Tarik struggles to find his place in a world where things aren't as they seem, and Hayli struggles to hold on to the secrets and truths the Science Ministry tries to erase.
There is seriously so much to this book. I almost don't know where to begin...so I'm gonna reference my first review as a starting point.
The pacing: just as you think "maybe I can put this book down at the end of this chapter," you're proven wrong. There was never a good place to stop reading, the intrigue got twistier and turnier (you like that?) with every page.
The characters: I love that the characters struggle so much with what's right, and what's wrong, and what are their actual thoughts anyways? The darkness they are in seems so relatable to me, even if I haven't been in their shoes. Even they don't know if they're good or bad, and I love that! There's also some more exploration of the secondary characters and they are important to the story.
The setting: Even more exploration of Cavnal and mentions of other countries kept me interested in the setting. The steampunk remains an interesting element and I really loved it!
In keeping with getting to know some of the secondary characters better, we also get to see some of the other magic they use and it's pretty cool and useful. Tarik has yet to completely understand his magic, and it's heartbreaking and heart-pounding and hopeful and scary and I could just go on and on.
Spending time with the skitters and the mages means we get to enjoy the Cavnish slang some more!
Repeated images and lines that are very powerful, to me at least.
Despite what they've been through, the romance between Tarik and Hayli is beautiful, frightening, and dangerous.
There's a lot of action in this book, and a lot of political players driving the events that are beyond the mages' control, including Tarik.
The alternating POV between Tarik and Hayli continues to be strong and their voices distinct, their struggles pulling at your heart-strings and tear ducts. I love when an author pulls this off so effectively, and also still gives so much insight to the other characters that we don't see the thoughts of. The writing is just absolutely beautiful and mind-bending and I hope you give it a chance, it will not disappoint!
I'm just dying over here knowing it'll probably be years before I know how the rest of the series goes!
**This review also appears on my blog.
***May contain spoilers if you haven't read The Madness Project
The madness turns dark as Tarik struggles to find his place in a world where things aren't as they seem, and Hayli struggles to hold on to the secrets and truths the Science Ministry tries to erase.
There is seriously so much to this book. I almost don't know where to begin...so I'm gonna reference my first review as a starting point.
The pacing: just as you think "maybe I can put this book down at the end of this chapter," you're proven wrong. There was never a good place to stop reading, the intrigue got twistier and turnier (you like that?) with every page.
The characters: I love that the characters struggle so much with what's right, and what's wrong, and what are their actual thoughts anyways? The darkness they are in seems so relatable to me, even if I haven't been in their shoes. Even they don't know if they're good or bad, and I love that! There's also some more exploration of the secondary characters and they are important to the story.
The setting: Even more exploration of Cavnal and mentions of other countries kept me interested in the setting. The steampunk remains an interesting element and I really loved it!
In keeping with getting to know some of the secondary characters better, we also get to see some of the other magic they use and it's pretty cool and useful. Tarik has yet to completely understand his magic, and it's heartbreaking and heart-pounding and hopeful and scary and I could just go on and on.
Spending time with the skitters and the mages means we get to enjoy the Cavnish slang some more!
Repeated images and lines that are very powerful, to me at least.
Despite what they've been through, the romance between Tarik and Hayli is beautiful, frightening, and dangerous.
There's a lot of action in this book, and a lot of political players driving the events that are beyond the mages' control, including Tarik.
The alternating POV between Tarik and Hayli continues to be strong and their voices distinct, their struggles pulling at your heart-strings and tear ducts. I love when an author pulls this off so effectively, and also still gives so much insight to the other characters that we don't see the thoughts of. The writing is just absolutely beautiful and mind-bending and I hope you give it a chance, it will not disappoint!
I'm just dying over here knowing it'll probably be years before I know how the rest of the series goes!
July 17, 2016
50-50!
There are two because it's...so far this set. The as story and writing are absolutely genius but both books now have ended leaving the reader hanging on a cliff. I will not be forced to buy subsequent books because I'm left in the dark about what is happening. Authors need more respect for their readers and to themselves to believe in their talent, to know people are going to keep buying their books because they are such good writers. When I really enjoy a book, when it is a book with a beginning, a middle and an end-hen I choose to buy everything I can find by that author. When an author stops the story right in the middle, that's it. I won't buy anything more by them. If you are so insecure you think you can only sell books by forcing people to buy them just to find out how the story ends-well, you need to find a new line of work or get therapy. I lost myself in the story and even though it stopped in the middle I already owned the only other book in the set which was book 2 so I wasn't as upset when I had to close book 1 not knowing anything and put it down. I just picked up book 2 and started reading...over 1200 pages in 2 days. Then I got to the last few pages of it and started to worry and sure enough, it just stopped right in the middle and THERE IS NO BOOK 3!
So, my rating for the book is 5* but a big fat zero for the author and I will not be buying any more of her multiple books nor supporting any author that can't finish a book. For heavens sakes, look at Steven King. He's written multiple book stories that has each individual book have an ending with the possibility getting to read more about the characters and the bigger picture. Torn Recommendation.
There are two because it's...so far this set. The as story and writing are absolutely genius but both books now have ended leaving the reader hanging on a cliff. I will not be forced to buy subsequent books because I'm left in the dark about what is happening. Authors need more respect for their readers and to themselves to believe in their talent, to know people are going to keep buying their books because they are such good writers. When I really enjoy a book, when it is a book with a beginning, a middle and an end-hen I choose to buy everything I can find by that author. When an author stops the story right in the middle, that's it. I won't buy anything more by them. If you are so insecure you think you can only sell books by forcing people to buy them just to find out how the story ends-well, you need to find a new line of work or get therapy. I lost myself in the story and even though it stopped in the middle I already owned the only other book in the set which was book 2 so I wasn't as upset when I had to close book 1 not knowing anything and put it down. I just picked up book 2 and started reading...over 1200 pages in 2 days. Then I got to the last few pages of it and started to worry and sure enough, it just stopped right in the middle and THERE IS NO BOOK 3!
So, my rating for the book is 5* but a big fat zero for the author and I will not be buying any more of her multiple books nor supporting any author that can't finish a book. For heavens sakes, look at Steven King. He's written multiple book stories that has each individual book have an ending with the possibility getting to read more about the characters and the bigger picture. Torn Recommendation.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews