Name: Manah Wars - Glimmer in the Darkness
Rating: 4.22 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 9798201700027

90 reviews

December 1, 2023

1.5 stars rounded up.

There is so much to say about this book that I’m not quite sure where to start. It follows the story of Aedan as he deals with his own identity and interacting with other strong personalities around him. However, the story isn’t so linear. It jumps around a lot with characters who I thought were important to the storyline just disappearing and reappearing at the end of the book with no real explanation to where they went. The pacing of this book was off and clunky, the characters’ interactions between each other were jarring at times due to their word choices, and I couldn’t get into a rhythm with the book as a result. In saying that, I’ll now go into more detail about certain aspects of the book that I took issue with.

Audience, tone, and dialogue

From the very opening pages I was made aware that this book is aimed at a younger audience, as the word choice from Aedan, his father, and his brother were very juvenile. Given the fantasy setting and the family’s senior place in society (the leaders of their community), I was quite shocked to hear the father talking to his sons as if he was more immature than them. Maybe this was to show Aedan as the more mature figure, but it just led to confusion and a distraction from the story and dialogue. Even the words used in narration were unusual and did not feel suited to the situation. For example, early on in the book when a competition was being held in the town, the crowd was described as “going bonkers” in reaction to the unfolding events. This unfortunately led to a disconnect in the flow of the story whenever such words were used. It could be that the intention of using such words was for comedic purposes and again in aiming at a young audience, but even so, using comedy at those times would detract from their serious context. Overall, the mark was very much missed when it came to how the story was portrayed. Everything was diminished in suspense and action as nothing ever felt high stakes. This is a shame because there were definitely a few scenes that could have been wonderfully presented had better words been chosen to describe them.

Plot and storytelling

As I mentioned earlier the plot jumps around a lot from scene to scene, with different storylines appearing and disappearing with no real purpose to them. The main complication was not obvious and there were many concurrent storylines that I felt could have been the main one, with none being given proper attention. An ongoing problem with this book is the amount of telling and not showing done. While the book is already 312 pages, I feel another 300 could have made the difference in filling the plot holes that were everywhere. It travels at such a fast pace and skips between storylines, ending as abruptly as it began. I understand this is the first book of a planned 10 book series, but it is obvious when there is an intentional cliffhanger where more is set up for future books compared to stitching up the end just to split a story into more parts. The book could have benefited from a few more chapters properly sealing the ending rather than how it was left.

Ultimately, it is Aedan’s perspective that is presented throughout the story, a lot is left to the imagination in how everyone relates to Aedan. Yes, he’s the second son of the leader of his community, but even when his lineage is brought into contention, people he previously had strong connections to suddenly break apart with no proper explanation to why. This could have been expanded on if it was to show Aedan dealing with this, but he himself just accepts it or rather does not seem to acknowledge how odd it is that people who have spent a lifetime with him suddenly break off contact in an instant. Moreover, it is a common occurrence that characters that are meant to be close to him or are in the start of the book do not end up having much to do with him as the story progresses. This would not be an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that they do just disappear from being mentioned. Their absence from the middle of the plot is not explained nor expected, leaving me wondering what happened to them and why Aedan also does not seem to care much. Even when some characters do show up again, nothing is made of their reappearance and the story continues. Again, a few more chapters delving into their perspectives would help this, or even a moment of Aedan thinking of their whereabouts would make this plotline flow better.

There is a clear influence on other major fantasy series with this book, the most notable to me was ‘Lord of the Rings’ by J.R.R Tolkien. This isn’t an issue in and of itself, except that it does end up feeling like a cheap version of it. There is nothing new that adds to the experience that cannot otherwise be found in the former work. The characters, while individually were original, their dynamics were very similar, ending up pulling me out of being emersed in the story. Additionally, there was limited descriptive language used to help create a visual idea of the setting. Some characters were described in part, but all that is really described is the respective ages of the characters to one another. All I know of Aedan is that Even the scenes are left blank in my mind. I could get a feeling from them in how the characters were either sacred or anxious about what they were facing at the time, but in my mind it is a blank canvas as to what is going on. I have not experienced this with any other book. This is what I mean by the severe lack of showing, this book was all telling.

Characters

I have many issues with most of the characters in this book. The main protagonist, Aedan, seems to struggle between being headstrong in his willpower in some situations then in others is completely fine to accept whatever is being told to him. This dynamic is overtly clear with his brother. They have a toxic relationship that is dealt with poorly, with opportunities for reconciliation between them left in the dust, leaving me disappointed. His willingness to blindly accept whatever his brother does to him may be a genuine part of his character, as that dynamic is not displayed in his interactions with any other character. However, there is no introspection shown into what Aedan thinks of this, which I think is what is missing from making this dynamic more convincing. How Aedan interacts with the Child Queen were much more enjoyable to read, even though the Queen showed similar tendencies to Aedan’s brother, with this change in interactions not being explored.

The female characters in this story were unfortunately undervalued and outshone by their male counterparts. It was disappointing to see their obvious reliance on the male characters. This was felt especially whenever any of them had a real opportunity to stand on their own, it was consistently ended with some male character taking over or having the last say. The Child Queen had the most opportunities to be a strong female lead, but at every opportunity she was kept back by a male advisor ending her speeches for her or Aedan disrespecting her. There was an attempt to set up a love triangle with Aedan, the Queen, and Aedan’s lover (I’ve forgotten her name), but it became so obvious towards the end of the book what the outcome of that would be, and it wasn’t even addressed, I presume it will be left to future books to be dealt with. The Queen’s fascination with Aedan felt shallow and immature, with his backlash and disrespect to her being the sole reason she wants to get to know him better and ultimately become closer to her than just an advisor. However, it does show the Queen being introspective about this, which is a redeeming factor, even if it doesn’t lead her anywhere. The two fighters that Aedan and Grandor the Druid (the off-brand Gandolf the wizard) meet had the healthiest relationship out of anyone in the book, but even so the wife was placed underneath her husband, given little opportunities to highlight her own strength. Aedan’s lover was also portrayed as such a weak character, her purpose made purely to either end up with Aedan or his brother. She was given no opportunity to do anything herself except to be a damsel in distress pining over Aedan. This is very disappointing as her personality was not shown, she wasn’t spoken about unless it was when Aedan or his brother were fighting over her, and even at the end she was portrayed to be shallow in her previous love for Aedan after all. Her character made little sense and it was a genuine shame she was just a pawn for the male characters. It really reflected a glass ceiling that these female characters were placed under, , there was always something restricting them from having genuine power.

The role model figure that (this spoiler mentions scenes from The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien in it) Grandor is meant to have in this book is written at such a fast pace it feels as though Aedan accepted this druid as his second father after their first conversation. It would have benefited the story to have Aedan be more skeptical at first about this figure who appeared out of nowhere claiming to know the original of his birth rather than have Aedan accept him for obvious plot progression. More to this, Grandor’s role in the final battle against the Vampires was written in such a way that felt like a direct copy of Gandolf’s sudden entrance in the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Having read both books I cannot help but notice the similarities in this with the same effect that results in both battles. There are definitely enough differences to make it avoid being plagiarism, but it still felt too heavily influenced and not original enough in how it played out.

In summary, I did not enjoy this book. It felt like a draft version rather than the final edit. The characters were not written in a consistent way and the underwhelming role that the female characters were limited to left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. However, this story does have a foundation that can be worked on and added to, and given the state of the final scenes, there is a lot that the rest of the 9 planned books have to pick up on and I really hope they do.

Manah Wars - Glimmer in the Darkness

D.A. Di Muro

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D.A. Di Muro

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