Review: Duskfall

Duskfall
Rating: 3/5 
Buy or Borrow: Borrow 
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher, Titan! 

Stuck with arrows and close to death, a man is pulled from the icy waters of the Gulf of Nahl. Winter, a seemingly quiet young fisherman’s daughter, harbours a secret addiction that threatens to destroy her. A young priestess, Cinzia, must face a long journey home to protect her church from rebellion. A rebellion sparked by her sister.

Three characters on different paths will be brought together by fate on one thrilling and perilous adventure. 

I am a HUGE fantasy fan and Titan always deliver for me, and I was really excited to read this because it sounded completely awesome. For me, this book was incredibly mixed. The book ends on a cliffhanger, and I'm so intrigued to see what happens next but it took me until the end third of the book to get really interested in the story. 

I was intrigued from the start, but once I reached 200 pages, I found my interest waning and I think a part of it was a character that was bugging me. But I kept on, and then it hit the final part and I became more and more invested in the characters. Now, I'm not sure if my lack of interest in the middle part and my irritation with a character was down to the fact I wasn't in the mood or what, but this boo does have good points, don't get me wrong! 

I thought Knot was intriguing, it was him that kept me reading! I wanted to know who he was, what he was and find out more about him and his past. I wanted to know more about the world of the book, I wanted to know more about the history of the world, but sadly there wasn't as much as I was hoping for but maybe in the next book! 

Astrid was one of my favourite characters, she was completely and utterly hilarious, "Don't worry about me. I was only tortured, stuck full of holes, and then assaulted by an entire building. Nothing serious." She made me laugh so much and I loved her, and I'm so intrigued by her and who she's working with and what she's up to. I also really liked the glimpses we saw of Lian but I feel like we didn't really get to see enough of him, so the ending of the book had less of an impact for me to be honest, which is a shame because he finally got over Winter. Nash and Kali where intriguing, they where mysterious and I'm still SO curious about them and the people they work for! 

I actually really liked Cinzia, I was curious about her and her relationship with her family, why she didn't come back once in seven years, how she fit in with the other characters as everyone else was linked at that point and it took a while for the connection to be made. I really felt for her, she had lived her life one way, dedicated her life to her religion and then her sister Jane comes in and blows it all away. I felt like her sister could have been better about it, I didn't really like the way her sister spoke to her once or twice, it was kind of...condescending maybe? Her sister was quite selfish at some points as well, and considering how much she messed things up for her sister she could have been a little nicer to her. 

The character I had a problem with was Winter. Yes, she shows how human she is and she is very flawed, but she just irritated me. One minute she was acting like marrying Knot was the worst thing in the world, and like she had no choice but to do it, and was essentially using him to get out of her village. The nest she's like "oh I must find him" and goes after him and kills a tonne of innocent people to do it. Then she's suddenly in love with him. Like dude make up your mind. She seemed quite selfish at times, and she was quite rude to her travelling companions, including Lian, her best friend. It was well written and interesting to see her struggle with her addiction, but for the most part I didn't actually like Winter all that much. The amount of times her inner monologue was all "She knew it was silly" was a little bit repetitive and yeah. She bugged me and once I hit 200 pages it made it difficult for me to want to keep on reading. I only managed it because I loved Astrid and was intrigued by Knot. 

You can probably already guess that I didn't get the romance between Winter and Knot. We see Knot found and then boom, it's skipped a year and they're suddenly getting married and Winter's all like "I have to do this" and blah blah, but she's not exactly thrilled about it and like I said above...she randomly started following him and then decides she loves him near the end of the book. I didn't buy the romance between the two, or see it at all. For me it didn't really make sense, and I was pleased the romance was kept to a minimum. 

I liked the friendship between Knot and Astrid, and I'm rooting for Astrid to do the right thing and not what I think she might do! I had problems with the romance like I said, and I also kind of had a problem with the group as a whole. We get multi POV's but Winter is so self involved I didn't really get her connection to anyone except for BFF Lian. They where all kind of thrown together, and Winter didn't like anyone except for Astrid, Knot and Lian so her POV made it hard for me to see the 'growing friendship' and 'camaraderie' between them. Like I honestly don't think any of them give a damn about each other except for Winter, Knot and Astrid, they don't really care about Cinzia and co. So it's an odd group. I'm not sure if there was supposed to be a bond between them and I missed it or what. 

As you can tell from some of what I've said, there's a lot of questions to be answered still and a lot of things to be found out.  The beginning is slow as the world is being built up around us, the rich politics and religion, the history. But there was so much more that would have been good to know and I'm hoping we'll get to learn it in the next book. You get thrown in the deep end with the language of the world and it makes it hard to get in to the book properly. I got confused a couple of times which impacted everything. There where also a couple of editing mistakes that I think I only picked up on because I wasn't too focused on the story, like Winter saying she had five crystals left when it should have been four. 

Duskfall had it's good points, it was funny, there was plenty of action, a rich world, politics and religion. It was vivid and atmospheric, and I loved Knot, Astrid and Cinzia. I wanted to know more about the world and the characters, I was intrigued the entire way through which kept me reading when I might otherwise have given up because of my problems with the book, Winter for example. But I knew from early on she was going to bug me! Everyone keeps going on about the cliffhanger, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, it leaves you wanting more but it's manageable! I'm definitely intrigued to see what's going to happen with the other characters as everything has gone to hell, literally. I'm intrigued to see what's going to happen to Cinzia, Knot and Astrid and to find out more about each of them. Especially Knot!