Ever the Night Road by Michael Breen is an indie fantasy novel that was given to me as a gift by a friend of the author who thought I might like it. This is the first book in a duology (paid links).
Here is the blurb:
This is a fantasy.
Of a City of water and glass. Of drowned things and lost memories lying just below its surface. Of concrete slums, and a decaying Oracle Tower. And a deep underground.
It is also a fantasy of orphan children. Like Dagny Losh. She is an escape artist. Not a chosen profession but a survival tactic, thrust upon her at a young age to break free from poverty and violence, fever and flood. While others perished, Dagny emerged into a privileged world of polished brass gates and opportunity. But she is an imposter, a misfit in fine clothes. Perfumed with dirty fingernails.
Now, at seventeen, Dagny remains rudderless and lonely. Longing for a connection to a changing world. What she finds is a fragment of her old life, before the river washed everything away. A fragment once thought forever lost. And it will take all she has to protect it.
Ever the Night Road is a coming-of-age adventure story. Dagny and an array of companions undertake a high-stakes quest guided by the stars and ancient myth, encountering danger from both criminal and supernatural forces. Along the way, Dagny will discover the bonds of true friendship and the depths of her own bravery in a brutal and enchanting world.
This was a wonderfully inventive story set in a strange and fanciful world. I love when the current setting is built upon the remains of ancient structures and the mystery of those lost ages permeates the story. Dagny inhabits this world, and our first introduction of it follows her on a quest to rescue a lost boy from a spooky tower. She succeeds in this mission, echoing her dead brother’s life as an adventurer before a fever took him.
The plot wanders and I was never quite sure what the main story was supposed to be. However, Dagny is quickly swept up in the lives of a group of new friends and finds her place among them. She encounters new intrigues and eventually falls into a quest that takes her once again into those ruins of a forgotten time.
There is a powerful sense of magic in Ever the Night Road, yet the characters don’t name it as such or make active use of it. A boy has an unusual knack for a board game. Dagny escaped her home just before a devastating flood. Children are sinister specters and fireflies lead the way toward… something.
The only thing that kept this book from being a 5-star read for me was that I felt that the ending was weak. I didn’t realize this was the first book of two, so I think I had expected a more definitive conclusion. However, it looks like Jud, the second book in the series, was just released (paid link). I’m picking that up to read in the next few months.
Have you read any books where the current world exists on the remains of something ancient? Let me know in the comments (above).
Find more of my reviews here.
Selection Error – a flash fiction story podcast by Utopia Science Fiction Magazine in December 2022