Darkling

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Satara Lang has been on edge ever since her sister murdered her whole family.

Burdened by the torture of waking up each morning and struggling to get to the end of each day, Satara doesn't have the strength to think about getting revenge.

Until her sister returns to finish the job and Satara fights back.

Until a familiar stranger appears with stories of a homeland she doesn't remember

Until she realises her entire life has been a bloodstained lie and the power she always needed was only a secret away, coursing through her veins like fire and lightning.

And she begins to understand why she's never been afraid of the shadows watching her every step.

Darkling … A story of family, vengeance, power, and all that is lost and found between the three.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2021
Author: Sakinah B

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 3.5/ 5.0
Followers: 48
Views: 27,145

Chapters(61 total)

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

Triangle TollRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
As far as urban fantasy goes, Darkling isn’t half-bad. But it walked just a few inches away from being a much better version of itself, and for that it will find no forgiveness.
The story’s style was rather enlightening. I always had trouble differentiating head hopping from poorly attempted third person omniscient until I read this. This is the epitome of head hopping. The moment any character present in a scene has anything to contribute via their thoughts or intentions, we abandon any focus on our POV character to indulge in these. And atop of that, every chapter features a random amount of fully-fledged POV shifts to really twist the knife for those poor POV orphans. The structure of each chapter feels like it just can’t get any more unfocused and confusing.
No matter the disservice the story’s other elements do to it, the prose itself is competent, there’s no denying that. The selection of similes is unusual, if unilaterally dark and visceral. There are, however, signs of struggle with language, as some words just don’t belong in sentences they were put into, and some metaphors fail to communicate clearly that they are not to be read literally, forcing a double-take. Formatting also seems to be overused. Bold font serves as italic for sections already blanketed by italic, which is never a good sign.
The story is where all hell breaks loose. Volume One’s pacing was clearly meant to be watertight. It held itself together perfectly, up until it splashed meekly against the volume’s capstone chapter #6. I wholeheartedly believe that everything wrong with the story originated from chapter 6 being what it is. First of all, the anticipated reveal arrived prematurely, too soon to close off the volume. Because of that, it attempted to have its cake and eat it too, giving us the standoff we waited for but grasping to keep all the mystique of the antagonist intact. As a result, the scene fell flat, dispelling all the tension into murky nothingness. The story stumbled, and