“Death and shadow, and the return of a fallen god.”
“The Father of Shadow and Death” yes. That’s the title that you want if you are looking for a horror novel, and once you add fantasy to it and you are like: “Oh, what kind of gem do we have here…?” as you proceed to pick the book from the shelf of the bookstore. * Nods head in approval*
If you don’t know Tim J. MacKey, nor read any of his amazing books so far (you can find reviews of them here) you will only need to read until the note of the author for his name to be burnt in your mind forever because it goes like something like this:
“For the weak of heart, I offer my sincerest apologies should you press on with this book”.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA.
There are very few horror books that have made me stop reading them in shock, digust, or brutality, as I am highly tolerant for the macabre, so let’s see if the note of the author delivers or not, and knowing Tim MacKay, it will deliver. High hopes and fingers crossed 😀 Bring on the darkness!
The first thing that you will ask yourself is: why do we start the book with our main character, Car Tazzian Braddock, The Vindicar (Vicar/High Priest), celebrations (and flirting with other men’s wives?).
He, as the main character is a very smart and polished man, with an incredibly messed life. One can say he is the perfect definition of a rebel loser without a cause. His family is torn, his wife left him and hates him, his kid hates him, most people see him from the sides and his only friend, or best-friend that still believes in him is starting to lose faith, so yeah, things can’t go downhill from here, or can they?
Suprise, they can, and they will! Haahahahaha, and this is because he is trying to solve a string of murders in his town that can be related to mythical wolves of death, and as he goes to the king to ask for his blessing, it seems like the king himself is also going through a balls-tightening situation. But wait, there’s more!
In his very posh and royal-like fashion, our main characther (poor guy), as he tries to lift himself by his shoes-strings, with a single word, makes himself an enemy of death and darkness encarnate, hahahahahahahah, this is fantastic bad luck if you ask me, but oh, if only things were kept this way and the ones he loved wouldn’t start dying mysteriously, things would just be jolly, but the book keeps getting darker and darker, just like how we like it, and our main character seems to have no chance, nor a clue, on how to solve the chaos that is unfolding.
As you read the book, you will encounter many of the almost poetic choice of words that make Tim McKay’s books quotable, and you will understand why his works leave lingering “spells” on readers. Talk about a je ne sais qoui and stuff. Small things like:
“In the years since Braddock’s encounter with Hakaz, he’d suffered many a day when one foul turn led to another, a downward spiral into misery. Some said these things came in threes, but for Braddock, so low a number, so few misfortunes, would have been welcome.
Today was shaping up to be such a day.”
As people are massacred in the most brutal ways, and somehow our main character that isn’t already hated enough by everyone in town is always there to witness the carnage, we as readers begin to ask ourselves: “How can anyone stop a person, or entity that literally can turn into magic smoke and disappear in thin air after murdering everybody? How can anyone believe our poor main character given that he is always there, and there are very little clues not to frame him?” And maybe most important question, “how much more misery will this poor guy endure?”
Along with the horrid killings driven by a maniac death cult (and the failed romantic attempts to be with other people’s wives,) one of the central pieces of the book is a necklace. Weird, I know, but the thing is that this necklace is one of the few things that keeps our main character alive as it protects him from evil, or so it was told to him but as the plot advances, this idea gets challenged again and again and the question becomes: Is the necklace protecting him from evil, or is it just a magical airtag of some entity that is trying to toy and torture him?
We found it awesome that the villains in this book are super organized and everything seems planned to detail and no clues are given as to whom, when or why they are going to strike, and the more the book develops, the more we as readers think that there is no way to stop them as they are too powerful and maybe this book won’t have a happy ending at all, which makes it even more interesting to read because we wouldn’t mind it not having one and if the chaos continued to escalate with each page. Awesome stuff right here.
The portrait of evil in this book is uncanny and surprisingly fitting.
It’s not an evil that is “in your face, I’ll kill you” style, but an evil that is evasive yet present, powerful and numerous yet pretends to be able to be stopped, highly intelligent but silent and never boasting, commanding yet always on the background and playing with the characters and the plot, and coming out of nowhere dominating everything and causing death, chaos and suffering on its wake when it attacks without hesitation, and there is little one can do to stop it. Unrestrained evil, and our MC has no plot armor to protect him.
And then after all the evil, all the senseless death, seemingly senseless torture (and 5 pages of bliss given to the main character so he wasn’t utterly miserably throughout the entire book…) the author, right at the end, in the last chapter, not only makes the connection with the first book of the series: Rise of Dresca (review here, great book by the way), but also pulls out, not one, not two, not three, not four, but five plot twists that will make you realize that this book wasn’t really about what we thought it was, and all this evil, might not be as evil as one thinks it was, (or it’s in truth really evil but we now just know why it exists), and the evil ones aren’t actually the ones you think they are.
Yes, we were fooled until the end, and Tim Mckay surprises us once again with another awesome story, giving an added sense to the series and renewed meanings to everything we have read so far.
Now, is the book worth the read? Yes! Very much so, specially if you have the guts to endure tragedy after tragedy just to be slapped with violent plot twists in the end.
How do you know if this book is for you? Well, if you are someone who likes psychological thrillers, fantasy, conspiracy, brutal deaths, or plot twists that will leave you questioning everything you’ve read to that point, you can’t miss with The Father of Shadow and Death by Tim McKay. This book will deliver. Btw, it has one of the BEST book ending we’ve read in years! Worth every second.
Pros:
- Excellent characters, character development and relationships
- Plot twists on the plot and on the character development stories
- Plot twists on top of plot twists on top of plot twists
- It explains a lot on the book Rise Of Dresca
- A hero dog
- Senseless death and carnage
- Mystery from start to finish
- Cool villains
Cons:
- None
Scribble's Worth 
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