I thought it was fine - certainly delivers on the action, and did some interestingly gray things between the two sides - but it felt like it was meant to be a movie, and not necessarily in a good way. World-building, characters, the magic system, all of that description is skipped in favor of the graphic death scenes. The final battle seemed especially cinematic without allowing things to settle very much emotionally. I couldn't even tell if I liked Larkin that much: it seemed as if even she was mostly a tool for the action to move along.

It's not horrible, and maybe you'd like it better if you enjoy horror/action more than I do, but I didn't particularly enjoy it.

Interesting story. A little complicated keeping track of everyone as the world building was pretty sparce.

I enjoyed the horror aspect of the book without it being 'scary' but I didn't get enough background to fully understand Kyran's goals and feud with Ilona.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I keep my reviews spoiler-free and they are unaffected by the free copy.

For some reason, I had it in my head that this was a superhero type book. That was a very wrong assumption. This is more in the realm of magic. Which is still pretty interesting and I liked the different manifestations of it, but because I had that other assumption I was really lost for a while. I almost feel like I should re-read this eventually because I still don't think I entirely absorbed the backstories and world-building.

The thing that bogged me down, especially in the first half of the book, was that they were referred to as Empaths. And of course my understanding of Empath abilities comes from Heroes and Charmed. Yes, they're powerful beings in those worlds, but it took me a while to get past those examples to what this book was portraying. Because the way they use emotions to conjure things in this book was a little strange. I also got bogged down trying to figure out why Empaths were so suppressed that one character commented on how they didn't know Empaths could even read. This again may be something I missed, but that line in particular stuck with me and I'm not sure if it was ever focused on in more detail.

I do wish the other characters were fleshed out a lot more. It wouldn't have hurt to have the book in a multi-POV rather than focusing on one character. The others were plenty interesting and some of the moments would've been a lot stronger if the reader got to see things from their perspective. If anything, that could've heightened the horror elements. The romance element is there. You get the obligatory steamy kissing and handwaved sex scene. It's not as annoying as some other YA romances but it's still something I could've done without and the story would've been about the same if it was gone.

It doesn't help that the formatting of my free copy was a little off sometimes. Like a paragraph would be a singe word and then the rest of the sentence would be the next paragraph. That's another reason why I'm thinking of re-reading this book later, so I can see how the paragraphs are supposed to look.

The ending felt a little too easy. It's possible I missed something, but it seemed like things were wrapped up too neatly and happily. Especially considering everything that happened in the middle of the book, that's really disappointing if that's the case.

Once the horror elements started kicking in, that's when I finally started liking what was going on. I don't want to say too much because of spoilers, but the atmosphere and the fear was done nicely. How the characters changed in their journey was cool and there were some downright creepy moments. I'd say those were the best parts of the book.

It was an interesting book. I hope we get more horror like what was done here in the future.

#EightWillFall brings magic and bandits to a new genre blend. Sarah Harian creates a foreboding feel of overwhelmingly intense darkness. You know something bad is going to happen which keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire novel.