Is anyone surprised to see another Greek mythology inspired book on this blog? Probably not. After a long while it had to spend on my wishlist, Daughter of Darkness simply had to come home with me a few months ago – thanks to a recommendation post by @chaosonolympos. A YA fantasy novel about a servant of Hades, that goes on an (almost?) lethal heist, together with a whole bunch of people she can’t stand and another one she wants to protect at all costs? Definitely. A book about an evil tyrant, who is no other than the famous Orpheus himself and whose love to Eurydice is quite different from how we know it? Absolutely.

Synopsis:

Deina carries the mark of Hades on her forehead. She’s a Soul Severer, responsible for guiding souls through the Threshold into the Underworld – or trapping them there, destined to never find their way to the fields of Asphodel.
The freedom she craves is decades away if she is to reach it at all. Hence, Deina volunteers for a mission ordered by the empire’s ruler, Orpheus himself. The goal: Find his dead wife Eurydice and bring her back from the Underworld.
Together with other Severers of the House of Hades – her closest friend, an arrogant warrior, an artistic thinker, and her personal antagonist – Deina is going to do what she’s best at: Steal. Eurydice and everything she needs to secure her freedom.

My opinion:

To be honest, Daughter of Darkness looks like a very typical YA fantasy book. It is the story of a stubborn female protagonist with a kind of magical power who is sent on a dangerous journey with a bunch of other stubborn people with a kind of magical power, to then find out a lot about herself and the world she is living in on the way. But isn’t this sort of plotline exactly what we love this gerne for? What is there to say against a magical story full of tension and danger, interesting as well as somehow relatable young people that resist evil tyrants and slowly dive into a fight against the gods? I personally very much enjoyed these “cliché” aspects. Of course said ideas and plotlines can easily become boring, but Daughter of Darkness used them in the most entertaining, enthralling way I can think of.

I was pulled into the book from the very beginning until the very end. Even though I didn’t notice a whole lot of incredible plot-twist, there still are some surprising, intriguing things every now and then and even when that’s not the case, there are enough other levels on which the book made me want to continue reading.

Very high on that scale are the characters, of course. I found Deina to be a pleasant protagonist. She isn’t the most fascinating person I’ve ever read about, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy reading about her. While not being the most likable person at the first glance (and the second one as well), Deina is determined and has dreams, she is strong-willed and witty and even though her stubbornness comes close to being annoying at times, it is a valid part of her personage as well.
Still, I would have wished for a little more proximity. Generally, I like books written in third-person perspective and of course not every book needs its characters to be entirely close to the reader. In Deina’s case, I even understand, why we don’t get that near to her heart at all times. She is a withdrawn person, mostly due to the upbringing she experienced at the House of Hades, Still, I felt a lack of emotional connection to Deina and her story throughout my read and getting a little more emotive insight concerning her character – either through a more saturated language or through first-person perspective – would have probably helped.

I had similar problems with the other characters in the beginning. None of them really stuck out to me and I was regularly confused with who was who. There just weren’t any character traits or special things about them that made it easy to distinguish them. But after some time, this slowly began to change. I grew very fond of the whole “Underworld crew” and was interested in them as well as their stories. Of course, the fact that there are some things revealed about the different characters, their pasts and their futures, over the course of the story also contributed to this development. Hence the ending hurt even more.

It was hard for me to read in general because I didn’t know, Daughter of Darkness was part of a duology. I really thought it was a standalone and hence I was slightly shocked as there were only 30 pages left and EVERYTHING was going downhill. Now I still am very much unhappy with how everything resolved, but this isn’t because I didn’t like the ending. I was absolutely hooked on the last 50 pages and couldn’t stop reading even though I had to leave the house when there were only ten more pages to go. This was just cruel. And I have to wait until summer to read the finale of the series. It just isn’t fair, why has no one told me that before? (I’m fairly certain someone told me and I simply forgot, but we can just ignore that, right?)

Final thoughts:

Even though it took me a while to find my way into the story emotionally, I had a great time with my read of Katharine and Elizabeth Corr’s Daughter of Darkness. A novel for anyone who likes intriguing, plot-based YA fantasy from time to time. If you’re interested in Greek myths: even better.

General information:

Title: Daughter of Darkness

Authors: Katharine Corr, Elizabeth Corr

Publisher: Hot Key Books

ISBN: 9781471410918

Language: English

Pages: 419

My recommended reading age: 13+

Disclaimer:

All rights to the shown book cover are reserved to the publisher.