Mario Kart, the Scorpio Races, and Six of Crows have a one night stand which results in a baby. This is that baby.

Wowowow, I had such a fun time with this one! While I want to make sure I touch on my issues with the a-spec representation, I think I’ll clinch this review with that. In the meantime, let’s get to the good stuff, shall we?


<b>STRENGTHS: PLOT AND WORLD</b>

Mikira makes a bet with a powerful man to save her father—she will compete in the Illinir, a dangerous horse-racing competition that takes place once every ten years, and she will win it without the aid of an enchanted horse.

From the moment of this catalyst and onward, I was hooked. While I struggled to make sense of why Mikira would make such an impossible bet and think that scene should’ve been edited to make the logic stronger, everything that happened afterward with the plot was incredible.

This story follows two POV characters, Mikira the jockey, and Arielle, the black-market enchantress who can create magical creatures that do not bear marks of their enchantment. Above them is the puppeteer of the plot, Damien, who is essentially a mobster in a seat of power, contriving to bring these two women together and set the plot’s proverbial ball rolling.

The death-defying, magical horse race that is the Illinir was captivating to read. Mikira’s training leading up to the Illinir and participation in it gave major Hunger Games vibes.

Arielle’s plot line, slowly but assuredly coming into her power as she crafts the perfect golem horse, an enchanted beast that doesn’t have the telltale signs of a creature that’s been magicked, was also just as ensnaring. As she concentrates on fueling her well of power in order to craft a golem that has a shot at winning the Illinir, she slowly loses herself, bit by bit, to the magic. This interplay between practicing the magic that seductively calls to her like a siren’s song, all the while knowing that it’s chipping away at her humanity and slowly possessing her, was delicious and distressing to read all at once.

As for the magic system itself, Arielle’s power creating these golems is extremely illicit and could mean “the difference between steady work and a funeral pyre.” It involves shaping an animal out of clay and literally breathing life into it with her Kinnish magic, a highly persecuted form of magic from her conquered homeland, as ordinary enchanters from the conquering country simply charm existing objects and living beings. This magic system was incredibly unique and interesting to me, as Josephson interwove Jewish mythology into it and further enriched the world by grounding it in the mythology that is so specific and personal to her.

The power structure in the world was also something I loved. There is a royal family within this world, and underneath the royals are the different noble houses. These houses serve almost as their own warring mafias within the world at large. It is often said that they can get away with anything, and the next head of house among a brood of siblings is determined by something called the Ascension. The two Ascensions we hear of in this novel dictate that whichever child deals the largest blow to another house will be the next head of the house. The way they go about this oftentimes results in murder, theft, or other crimes. It really helped to orient the world into a darker one, cloaked in an atmosphere of moral grayness and bordering on absolute chaos.

Between the plot, the magic system, and some elements of the world building, I was thoroughly captivated. However, there are a number of things that chafed while I read as well.



<b>CHARACTERIZATION</b>

Because so much time is devoted to the world, the dual-POV, fast-paced plot of enchanted horse races and magical possession, and the magic system itself, there was left very little time to spend on other elements of the story. The first major issue was the characterization.

Mikira spends the majority of the novel as a hot-headed girl who acts first, speaks her mind, and thinks about it afterward. There is no real point in the novel that truly feels transformative toward her nature; by all intents and purposes, she starts the book and ends the book in the same form. There is a moment near the end, where she suddenly finds the self control to speak like a politician in front of an assembly of royalty, noble houses, and others, but because it is ignited by a single conversation and then occurs in the very next scene, which is her last in the novel, it feels unearned and potentially transient.

As for Arielle, she begins the novel as a hungry, poor, and unlicensed enchantress who practices the illicit Kinnish magic—that could get her put to death—just to make enough money to survive. She is meeker in nature and, due to the persecution of her people by the conquering country and its inhabitants, she often is forced to let slide injustice after injustice just to keep the peace and stay alive. This is until Damien crosses her path and brings her into his web of power and deception. He encourages her self assurance, her strength, and her power. As she feeds the never-sated beast within her that pleads for more illicit magic, he is there encouraging her as she grows stronger and stronger. This is until her magic finally consumes her.

Ari’s journey throughout this book certainly has all the hallmarks of true transformation, however, it is complicated by the fact that a man brings it out of her. It’s his power that keeps her safe in a world that would otherwise persecute her if she raised her chin to their injustices. It’s his encouragement that lights her up and keeps her pursuit of magic going. And ultimately, it’s his manipulation that leads her down into the descent. Not a whole lot of this takes place because Ari wants it for herself or could do it on her own, except maybe that last bit. It’s Damien’s facilitations that make it happen. This chafes a bit, since this book seems to have at the heart of it a feminist message.



<b>ROMANCE AND A-SPEC REPRESENTATION</b>

This leads me straight into my next complaint: the romance. Damien and Ari’s romance is the focal point in this novel, although we get hints of the goings-on between Reid and Mikira.

Let’s start this section out by stating that Arielle is demisexual. As an a-spec person myself who teeters on labeling herself similarly, I want to comment on the plausibility of the romance between Ari and Damien.

The first we hear of Ari’s sexuality is in a conversation between her and Mikira.

<blockquote><i>”I find him…interesting,” she mumbled, uncertain about the blossoming warmth in her chest.

It was a foreign feeling, although not an altogether unwelcome one, and it had been growing. Over the last few weeks, she’d learned more about Damien than she felt she had any right to. She knew he was a scholar, a man of numbers and figures. She knew how rarely he shared his smile and how often he sought a stiff drink. She knew that, as serious as he could be, he was full of passion. He cared for Reid and his house, and he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
</i></blockquote>

The issue with this section is that it is all telling and no showing. We see none of this blooming connection between Ari and Damien; most of the golem creation scenes where they are together are summarized and montaged away. They have maybe a handful of actual conversations on the page together, and then bam. Out of nowhere, this scene takes place.

Because of the revelation later in this scene which you will see below, this usage of montages and summary to skip past the formation of the romance doesn’t work with the context of a demisexual FMC. I can’t sit here as someone who identifies similarly and say I felt this was a credible representation when no time at all was devoted to actually showing any of this taking place.

Instead, the author skips straight past the alienation and uncertainty that actually resonates with the more frustrating but authentic sides of the demisexual experience, and she tells us about it in a single paragraph. What’s worse—that’s the last we hear of it. It left the representation feeling tacked-on. While, in the moment, I was excited seeing it laid out in plain English on the page, in retrospect, the representation just didn’t work for me. There was an effort there by the author, but ultimately it wasn’t a successful one.

Additionally, I had trouble buying that a demisexual individual who has made it this far in life—probably making friends and acquaintances of all genders—and never having formed an attraction with a single one, would fall for a person in such a short time, with little reason to trust him, and fall for him so thoroughly that he is the first and only person she’s ever been sexually or romantically attracted to. Maybe if Ari were a recluse in her early life, I could believe it, but not much is told to us about her life before she settled far from her family, so context was needed to dispel this inconsistency. Otherwise, this is yet another reason why this representation fell apart upon further inspection.

This conversation about sexuality continues between the two girls, with explicit in-the-text descriptions of sexuality, and a hint at Mikira potentially being aro/ace, although I’ll get to that in a second.

<blockquote><i>
“It’s a new feeling for me,” she continued, not sure what she intended to say. She’d never described this out loud before. “At first, I just thought relationships just weren’t for me, as I’d never felt attracted to anyone before. I’m starting to realize that I just need to get to know them first.”

Mikira tilted her head. “You need an emotional connection to have a physical one, you mean.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“I get that.” Mikira replied, thoughtfully. “I just want someone to sit on the porch and watch the horses with.”
</i></blockquote>

The way this conversation plays out feels very unnatural and overly textbook. It also oversimplifies demisexuality to its barest bones without giving us an individualized experience of it on the page. Truly, anything of substance that indicates demisexuality in Ari is laid out in this single scene, and then everything else proceeds in accordance with the status quo of relationship progression—kissing, sex, and confessions of love.

These confessions of love don’t end up resonating, however, due to the lack of relationship development up until this point. So in essence, the entire romance suffers because of the way the author skips over important foundational scenes for their relationship. We are told, rather than shown, how they feel for one another, and it all ends up feeling very hollow to read.

One fix I would have suggested if there had been time to edit this prior to release is that the romance should burn more slowly and be spread out across several books before reaching this point. I realize that the genre of this novel is not romance, and therefore the actual romance in it is only a subplot. In my mind, that’s all the more reason not to rush things by expediting the relationship in a single novel. I wish Josephson had taken her time and let it unfold across multiple books before reaching the depths that we are told about by the end.

On the note of the aro/ace protagonist that Josephson <a href=“https://twitter.com/kalynjosephson/status/1318669513664032770?s=46&t=XGpviVWSnK10fMoORlE8iw”>teased about on Twitter,</a> I’m curious to whom she is referring. It’s not Ari or Damien, since they have both a sexual and a romantic attraction toward each other. Reid wouldn’t be considered an MC, nor would Damien. So that leaves Mikira. And I’ll be honest, her comment about just wanting someone to sit on the porch with to watch the horses gave me strong aro/ace vibes.

However, there are multiple scenes in this book where she appears to be at least romantically attracted to a female side character and Reid. Specifically, there is a line where she thinks about a freckle above the female character’s lip and then course corrects herself so she focuses on other things. This does not spell aromantic to me. Even that description of Mikira fixating on her lips feels like a physical attraction is there—or at least the beginnings of one—which indicates that she may not even be asexual. So that begs the question: Why is Josephson marketing this as a book with an aro/ace MC? And why are other reviewers parroting this? There is just no strong evidence in the text to back up this claim, and if it’s supposed to be there, then I’m going to need a heck of a lot stronger research into aro/ace identities and experiences from Josephson before she pens the sequel.

With all that being said, I don’t know how the author identifies. If she is not in the a-spec community, or at least not specifically demisexual like Ari, I’m glad she gave us representation, even if it ultimately didn’t work. I want to see more of this. If it veers too close to oversimplification or textbook, so be it, as long as more books are out there shining light on a-spec identities. I will be the first to say I’m glad to see it, but I can also point out where I find it lacking in order to hopefully encourage more credible representations in the future.


<b>FINAL THOUGHTS</b>

Overall, this was a enjoyable ride! I had fun, despite the flaws with the characterization and the romance, and am so excited to see where Josephson takes this series going forward.


<b>AUDIOBOOK REVIEW</b>

Laurel Lefkow and Rebecca Norfolk’s performances were fantastic. I loved their accents and the attitudes their voices brought to the characters.


<b>Overall Rating:</b> 3.5 stars (rounded up)

<i>A big thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Macmillan Audio, for providing me with an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!</i>

This Dark Descent follow Mikira, a girl trying to save her family and their horse ranch from a greedy and antagonistic noble and Arielle, an enchanter unregistered with the crown and forbidden, powerful magic. The girls are brought together by a young man, Damien, who makes a deal with both that will give them all something they desperately want.

Arielle and Mikira were both great characters and I'm torn on which one was my favorite. I loved Ari for her connection (and disconnection) to the Jewish religion of this book. I loved Mikira for the love of her horses and her sisters and her desire to protect her family.

There was also a lot of casual queerness (and no homophobia) amongst the background characters and the implication of demisexuality and bisexuality/pansexuality with Ari and Mikira.

The thing I found most interesting about this book was its approach to Judaism. There are so many books that take Christianity and create a fantasy religion based on it, but I've never seen that done with Judaism. And even though this was fantasy Judaism, it was still implicitly Jewish, the way Ari and Damien talked about the foundations of it in their world and the different traditions, was so Jewish. The way golems were used was my favorite. I feel like often in media, golems are used to be scary, but golems are meant to protect and that's a big part of the golems that Ari makes.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review!

Just finished this audiobook and it was FANTASTIC!!! First off, the audio is great! I especially loved one of the narrators which happened to also be one of my fav character storylines! But I absolutely loved the magical horse racing, found family, Six of Crows/The Gilded Wolves/ Peaky Blinder vibes!! It had me on the edge of my seat or should I say "saddle". The race scenes were some of my favs!

It has some really great characters! My only wish is that my fav character needs more "screen time". I LOVED him and just wanted to see more of him. Plus I'm shipping a certain possible romance so hard and hope it happens. But there is another romance that's super cute! This was just so wonderful and definitely recommend adding it to your list! It's out 9/26!

The scion of a family of enchanted equine breeders, Mikira is a talented horse jockey. Caught using illegal magical enchantments to enhance his horse, Mikira’s father gets caught and arrested by evil Lord Rezek. To earn her father’s freedom, she must help Rezek win the Illinir, a series of deadly horse races. Mikira finds her world colliding with Lord Damien Adair and Arielle, an unlicensed Kinnish enchanter. To exact his own revenge on Rezek, Damian comes up with a plan for Arielle and Mikira with a plan of his own for the Illinir.

Narrators, Laurel Lefkow and Rebecca Norfolk’s unique intonations help bring the characters to life. Characters are original and engaging. Told through alternating points of view, plot is intriguing and mixes in Jewish folklore, but has lots of plot holes. Plot is complex and slow pacing may be unappealing to some listeners. Listeners who enjoy magic, fantasy, intrigue, and horses will likely want to pick this one up. Recommended for general library purchases where horse fantasy books are popular. Gr 8 and up, 3 stars

This was a great YA fantasy! It’s been a while since I’ve read a YA book, and this drew me in with the plot. It was unique and well-written, and it drew me in and kept me wanting more.

The characters were likable, the premise was one I hadn’t seen before, and the political intrigue made it even more interesting. I liked the unlikely alliance that the main characters formed, despite having their own selfish reasons for wanting to win the Illinir.

The story started off excellent, and was easy to get drawn to the mfc, but about half way thru everyone kept backstabbing everyone and it started getting confusing. I wanted to like the narrative, and just got more confusing the more it went on. People making gollums and racing them against each other for titles, and a ton of back stabbing is all I got from this book

Oh my goodness this book is going to be the next big thing, in my humble opinion! I totally expect it to go viral! I couldn’t stop listening, and the world building was top notch.

I found this one a little unengaging, more because of the writing than the narrator. Unfortunately not for me.

This Dark Descent was one of my most anticipated books this year, and it exceeded my expectations! The story is based around a race featuring enchanted horses, but it is so much more than that! High stakes race scenes mixed with great character development and hidden agendas create such an intriguing read. Add the phenomenal world-building and a few morally-grey characters, and it creates a book that is impossible to put down!

There are two main narrators: Mikira, whose family breeds horses, and Arielle, an unregistered enchanter with an interesting history. Both seemingly have no choice but to team up with each other, as well as a lord of one of the kingdom's noble houses, named Damien. They must work together seamlessly or risk losing everything.

The character development in this novel was brilliant! Seeing certain characters change their morals throughout the course of the book was amazing! It was incredibly well written, too. Damien was a perfect bad boy right from the beginning, and I think he may be one of my new favourite characters. All of the main characters were unique in their own ways and easy to empathize with, which was great!

One of my favourite parts of this book was the world-building. It was a phenomenal mix of religion, mythology, and politics, and created an incredibly lush world! The magic system was intertwined with the world in a seamless way, and very well planned! I hope we learn more about this world in the sequel!

The audiobook narrators added so much to the story. They did a great job! I really appreciated that there were different narrators for Mikira and Arielle, as it helped differentiate between the two. I highly recommend the audiobook!

I'm so glad that this book lived up to my expectations, and I highly recommend it to people who like morally grey characters, unique worldbuilding, and high stakes fantasy.