The Time of the Dark

My copies of this series are so worn by reading and re-reading that they are falling apart. There’s no higher praise from me as a reader. 

This is my comfort read, which is odd because it’s about the fall of a civilization—and The Dark, in particular, is terrifying. We never really see them. That’s partly because they aren’t entirely corporeal and can change size and shape at will. It’s also because anyone we know in the story who encounters them is almost certainly fighting for their life.

Are The Dark one character or many? Certainly, what one of them knows,… show more.

This is the first book of the three-book Darwath Series. A powerful wizard, in an attempt to save his world, winds up pulling a couple of people over from Earth. The relationships and the struggles, along with the wry humor, make this book great. All of Hambly’s fantasy books that I’ve read have worlds where magic does not come easy, and I always appreciate the price that magic users have to pay. This series of hers has a frighteningly good tale—that ending!

Another of my favorite authors. Time of the Dark, the first in this series, was also the first of her books that I read and while it was marketed as fantasy, it’s really more of a fantasy/horror hybrid. A history major and a biker from Southern California end up trapped in an alternate universe where magic exists and the Dark—very nasty and creepy monsters—have risen from their subterranean lairs and are decimating the population. Great characters and world-building.