BOOK REVIEW | DARK PROPHET | WICK WELKER

BOOK REVIEW | DARK PROPHET | WICK WELKER

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

I am the one of the end, the world maker, and the god breaker.

 Time is unraveling and Earth is doomed to wander the dark of space, unmoored from the galaxy itself. Galiaro’s plan for humanity’s escape to another dimension has failed and his dark matter robot creations, Beetro and Curse, were imprisoned in a nanoscopic black hole. Now, the entire planet is blighted by drought, the oceans heave beyond their bounds, and thousands are dispossessed. The end of the cosmos was foreseen by an ancient Alchean prophet named Othel.

 Thousands of years ago, Othel left behind the Dark Earth prophecy for the planet to survive the calamity. Now, the fellowship of Dark Theory—the drunken astrocyst Galiaro, Arym of the underground cult, thief Miree, time traveler Hawera, and the street rat Ribcage—must pick up the breadcrumbs of the ancient prophet’s quest to save Earth. Separately, they traverse the dying world and learn alarming news—the dark matter robots, Curse and Beetro, have escaped their black hole prison. Once parallel world enemies, the two robot brothers now have an uneasy alliance, and with an advantage… Curse already knows the prophecy. He has seen it before, used it before, and destroyed his own world with its power. Now on the cusp of annihilation, whoever wields the Dark Earth prophecy will unleash the cosmic power that could save—or doom—reality itself.

REVIEW

Goodness me, it’s been a couple of years since I read the first book in this series. However, to commend it, it is one of those books that has stayed with me, and I was avidly waiting for the sequel to be released.

Dark Prophet, is the second book in the Dark Law series (however, technically it is the third book because there is a novella called Dark Kingdom and is integral to some of the plot points in Dark Prophet) and takes us back to the world which is on the brink of disintegration.

The story mixes the aesthetics of the epic fantasy trilogy with hard science fiction, and if Dark Law was The Fellowship of the Ring, this is definitely The Two Towers.

The party that was formed in the first book is now well and truly split and all undertaking sperate tasks. The book alternates between these different POV’s giving us a much wider look at the world in general.

In the first book, the world building was excellent and in this second book, the layers of the original are built upon to give the reader a rich and expansive backdrop to a crumbling world.

As the characters go about their individual quests, we learn more about them and their depth is greatly expanded. One of the standouts was learning about Galiaro and the astrocysts (effectively the wizards of the story!) and how the society is set up.

There is a bit of timey wimey stuff in it which always mashes my head a bit, but this builds the complexity of the story. However, I did find that when this came into play, the story’s pacing slowed down a little in order to set up the reasons why the events that were happening were taking place.

The story then kicks back into a gear when Welker throws the choke open and throttles the story to full pelt for the last third of the book.

The story twists and turns with the various plot points leaving the reader avidly waiting for the third book in the series.