Review: Darkborn by Alison Sinclair

Title: Dark­born (Dark­born Trilogy)

Author: Ali­son Sinclair

Pub­lisher: Roc (Pen­guin)

Date (to be) Pub­lished: May 2010

Syn­op­sis: (from author’s website)

In the city of Min­horne, Dark­born and Light­born live side by side, never meet­ing, divided by a pow­er­ful mages’ curse that makes day­light lethal to the Dark­born and dark­ness lethal to the Light­born. They are divided, too, by their accep­tance of magic and tech­nol­ogy, their pol­i­tics, their reli­gion, and their views of the proper con­duct of men and women.

An act of nec­es­sary suc­cor brings Dark­born physi­cian Balthasar Hearne to the deadly atten­tion of agents of a new and unrec­og­nized enemy of both Dark­born and Light­born. His aris­to­cratic wife, Tel­maine, is forced to use mag­i­cal abil­i­ties she has all her life con­cealed, to pro­tect her hus­band and her chil­dren. And Ish­mael di Studier, mage and out­cast, who has spent his life defend­ing his bor­ders home from the maraud­ing Shad­ow­born, now finds him­self engaged against an even more dan­ger­ous enemy.

Bonus:

Read the first chapter.

Why Did It Come From?

I pur­chased this from Amazon.

Why Did I Choose It?

I’d read a review some­where and the con­cept inter­ested me.

My Review:

This book really moves along.  While it took me a while to read it, it wasn’t the books fault so much as I just didn’t have time to sit down and read it in one fell swoop.  The char­ac­ters are well devel­oped and in just a short amount of time it’s easy to find your­self lost in their world.  Sin­clair uses a con­cept of two peo­ples one who can­not sur­vive in the light, the Dark­born, and one who can­not sur­vive with­out it, the Light­born.  The two groups main­tain a sem­blance of peace from this curse for many years until all that they hold dear could be shat­tered by the out­liers, the Shadowborn.

Sin­clair takes an atmos­phere where old tech­nolo­gies are still new, and entwines her peo­ples in a well thought out man­ner.  She takes in to con­sid­er­a­tion how these two so seem­ingly dif­fer­ent groups afflicted and ben­e­fited by the light can co-​​exist and at times form alliances with the other.  The Dark­born are sight­less and with the devel­op­ment of their senses, they are able to inter­act and move around with sonn, in sim­plest terms, a sonar-​​like sense.  Although most of the time, if Sin­clair didn’t men­tion it, you wouldn’t real­ize that these peo­ple are blind.

To avoid any spoil­ers, I’m not going to elab­o­rate much more, but this is a book worth read­ing.  I look for­ward to Light­born, and the forth­com­ing Shad­ow­born.  Sin­clair has a unique and inter­est­ing tril­ogy that is in your best inter­est to check out.