Welcome to Day One of our Indie Fantasy Advent Calendar! We’re featuring an underrated indie author every day this holiday season to spread a little festive joy and promote authors we think deserve more love. Read our introduction to find out more.
Let’s open day eleven and see what book lies behind…
Today, on December 11th, we’re opening our calendar to The Many Shades of Midnight by C.M. Debell.
Isyr. Stronger, brighter, more beautiful than other metals. Once the most desirable thing in Ellasia, now it is priceless, the pure Isyrium needed to produce it mined to exhaustion. What’s left is controlled by the powerful mining syndicates, and such is the demand for their Isyrium that even kings do their bidding. Yet just as the beauty of Isyr hides a deadly secret, so too do the syndicates.
A terrifying enemy is spreading a plague across the land, a sickness that kills or transforms everything it touches. Unable to contain the outbreaks, the King of Lankara begs the aid of the disgraced former Duke of Agrathon, Alyas-Raine Sera, a man who has spent years fighting syndicate expansion and whose resentment over his exile makes him an unpredictable, dangerous ally in the power struggle between the rulers of Ellasia and the mining companies.
Attached to the envoy to recall the duke, the apprentice surgeon Brivar finds his skills and loyalty tested as his service to his new patron uncovers secrets about Isyr and the plague that link it to the mining of Isyrium – and threaten the life of the man it is his duty to safeguard.
In their own separate ways, Alyas and Brivar must take on the might of the syndicates and confront the greed, murder, betrayal and impossible choices of a crisis that has been decades in the making – and the price of their failure could be everyone and everything.
The Many Shades of Midnight is a SPFBO 9 finalist that I’ve heard a LOT about! This book has been praised for its masterful prose and character work, as well as exploring deep, dark themes. It’s a book that absolutely deserves more attention! Let’s see what the lovely Rowena of Beneath a Thousand Skies has to say about it:
“The Many Shades of Midnight has left me with the best and worst book hangover I’ve had for a while, and even writing this review has me itching to reread it again already, even though I don’t think my heart has recovered from the ending. I have not even come close to doing this book justice in this review, and all I can say is that this is absolutely a book that you should be adding to your TBR list. A story that resonates across time and place, with compelling characters, and ultimately a tale that offers a siren song of hope.”
High praise indeed! While this book was recommended to me, and I have yet to read it, it most certainly is high on my TBR pile
Join me in checking out The Many Shades of Midnight:
About the Author
Fantasy fan since forever, coffee-obsessed, cake-loving ex-Londoner, wife, mother, journalist, editor, designer, and cowrie collector.
- Website: Andeira.net
- Twitter: @lottedebell
- Instagram: @cmdebell
