Hello!

Today it is my absolute pleasure to be reviewing The Many Shades of Midnight by C. M. Debell as part of the Escapists Books blog tour, because this is a book that blew me so far out of the water that I’m still in orbit. Life has conspired against me while trying to get this post up, and the review was fighting me – because I LOVE this book so much that it’s impossible to do it justice. Definitely a favourite read of 2023, and I’ve already picked up the first of the author’s other books, because with The Many Shades of Midnight Debell has become a must read/buy author for me.

Disclaimer – I received a copy in exchange for an honest review, all thoughts are my own.

Book Summary:

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 protect.

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.