I really enjoyed this story. It is different from anything else I have read and I was pulled in right at the beginning. Who skins bats? Ha ha
I really the the tension between Sorrel and David at the beginning of the story and then his quest to find her again. They are so close to each other, but they never find each other! I was so frustrated for them!
I loved the story until the end. I just didn't get it. I even waited a few days to leave my feedback hoping I would "get it" after the story sunk in, but I still didn't understand. What did I miss? I look forward to the next book so I can gain some incite about what the last chapter meant.

I requested a copy of this because it sounded really interesting and I will say it has alot of good plot elements and ton of potential. I felt a bit mislead by the summary. It unfortunately just didn't deliver for me, I felt there were many things that were under developed and I just didn't engage with the writing style. The writing was a bit disjointed for my taste and I often felt like I missed something. I found myself going back to see if I skipped a page or missed a paragraph where something happened only to find that the information was simply not there and you had to infer what happened. Fortunately there normally enough context clues to figure out what was going on, sometimes I was just left confused.

I like dystopian settings, and this has an interesting twist where people are living in city environments and in the wilderness fending for themselves but there are mutants. I would have loved if the mutant aspect was explained, the author mentions viable and unviable children but never really explains what that means and how mutants came to be. Typically in dystopian or post-apocalyptic books, there is some long forgotten event that caused society to be in whatever situation they are in, but the main character Sorrel often speaks of her grandmother who lived in the Before time and taught her about things Before. It would have been nice to get an explanation about what occurred the transition from the Before to the After only recently happened and there are people living in the present time that actually know what happened.

Onto the story, the story begins in the town of Amat, a wilderness community where the people live off the land and get on pretty well. Our main character Sorrel is a presented as a brooding teen, when her village is attacked by mutants. The town is destroyed, most everyone is killed, and Sorrel just barely escapes. Sorrel's little brother is taken by one of the mutants and she is determined to go after them and avenge those she's lost. She also hopes to find some of her townsfolk alive, especially David, the boy she likes. David and Sorrel's relationship is a plot point that was misleading in the summary. They are described as boyfriend and girlfriend. I have to disagree. While they do clearly like each other, they aren't actually in a relationship. They say a few words to each other in the beginning of the book, but then they spend the rest of the book trying to get back to each other. Everyone is trying to keep them apart, but they were never actually together. But I digress...

Sorrel ends up in this creepy cult town with the people called the Free. They are led by Martin, who made my skin crawl, I think he was supposed to have that effect. The Free believe that everything Martin says is law and that he can do no wrong. It is pretty creepy. I give Thomson credit for the icky feeling I got when I read this part of the story since it definitely delivered on the creep factor. David along with everyone else the mutants left alive are sold into slavery by the mutants, while Sorrel's brother Eli is being well cared for by his new mutant protector. Sorrel eventually escapes Martin and the Free with the help of, Einstein, a mutant the Free were keeping captive and torturing. Sorrel and Einstein end up in the town of Dinawl in an attempt to find David and Eli. As you can imagine, she finds nothing but trouble and she also finds a resistance movement. Still fueled to find those she loves, she puts her trust in the resistance movement and begins to fight for the future. Sorrel has a birthmark and it resembles something from the Before so she decides to something akin to Katniss and the Mockingjay from the Hunger Games. The face of the revolution and the change that needs to happen to overthrow the corruption in society. That part was fine but nothing we haven't seen before. I found Sorrel to be irritating and immature, and I just don't see her being a revolutionary that saves the world as she is. She has alot of growing up to do yet.

Not all mutants are bad! Society has taken a step backwards and has reverted to destroying mutants as soon as they can but some survive. Sorrel has to learn to trust one when her village is destroyed and her love interest and little brother are taken. Things aren't always what they seem to be in The New Dark.

Interesting, Descriptive and mildly emotional.

The New Dark is about the Village of Amat and Sorrel. Sorrel runs away from her village when it is attacked by the mutants. When she comes back she finds almost everyone lying dead on the ground. But her brother Eli and her love interest David are missing. That's when she sets a journey to find them and rescue them. Will she find them or are they dead?

The journey is definitely not an easy one for Sorrel. She faces enemies both as nature and as humans. David and Eli, on the other hand, are taken as prisoners by the mutants and they have hardships of their own.
The Mutants have been shown in two different light. One is their harsh, violent nature and the other as the sad, pathetic breed who are tortured by humans for fun.

The plot is fast-paced and the writing is fairly simple. The author takes time to describe the world she has created. A sci-fi world which is so much different from the one we live in or can possibly imagine. The plot tends to get boring at times, but it gets better again. This keeps happening throughout the plot.
It took me really long to finish this book. Maybe because there's a vivid description of almost everything and random events keep happening

Unfortunately I got 18% into this book before I had to stop. It reads more like a draft than a complete novel. It introduced characters out then we don’t really see them again. It skips through days without giving the reader descriptions as to how these days are going. The MC jumps into action but it doesn’t make much sense. To book comes off rushed into the plot and trying to give slight backs story along the way but I think a few more drafts and editing could have taken this idea further and more creative renaming the fantasy and the world with more unique names.

some typical dystopian features but interesting enough to keep my attention

I found this book such a quick read, and it really didn't take me long to breeze through it, I found that the writing flowed really well, especially as the story is told from two perspectives (Sorrel, and David).

I found Sorrel at the start to be a bit of a whiney character, her mother asked her to do her bit, and instead she'd rather sit around with David, and had a tantrum when her mother called her on it.

I did find that she grew within the novel after the attack on Amat, and the journey that she goes on, she comes to realise that not all mutants are the same especially when she arrives in Ulbrrom and meets Einstein.

I really did not like Mara, what an absolute witch she was, what she does to Sorrel, and then lies to David about it really made my blood boil.

I really did like this story, and I will carry on with the series, I am assuming that it is a series as the ending wasn't a cliffhanger, but it was open-ended, meaning there is more to come from Sorrel.

I need to buy this when it comes out, I loved everything! The writing style, characters, plot. I loved how it always left you wanting more so you had to turn the next page to see what the characters are doing. The New Dark has two main characters that share the point of view through the whole story and its refreshing to see that both are action packed and pick up where they left of. I would recommend this to every fantasy lover ( and it will be on my bookshelf in November!)

This was a lovely dystopian/fantasy! The world building was great, and the characters were fleshed out well. I will be interested to see where the rest of the trilogy goes.

The New Dark by Lorraine Thomson is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. I found this an interesting read with mutants that are treated poorly, but at the same time they raid and kill villages. This is about a girl that survives a raid and is looking for her boyfriend and her brother, they got separated after the raid. The girl befriends a mutant and he helps her. It is interesting, it got slow in a couple of places but immediately picked back up. Enjoyed it. Love the cover!

The cover of this book is perfect for sucking in the avid fantasy reader. It is beautiful and mysterious and begs to be read. Unfortunately, for me, this was the highlight of the book. Thomson’s main character, Sorrel, was very hard to connect with. She was whiney and whimsical in the beginning and then took and all too quick one eighty to a hardened and vengeful heroine. The world building was very poor. We could understand the devastation and some of the surroundings when thought of from other post-apocalyptic materials. There was now back story to the “before” and left way too many questions to be answered. Seeing as this is the beginning to a trilogy, I understand that material may be discovered in future installments, yet after reading this one, I have no desire to further my reading. There was no real new material here. The mutants, kidnappings, and quests are all too basic and without a new world to adventure through or characters that jumped off the page to follow, the entire story fell flat.

Mini review:

I received this E-ARC via Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

DNF

I was really looking forward to reading this! It sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately it didn't work for me.

The beginning totally turned me off. And I just couldn't get back into it.

I do still recommend.

Review copy kindly provided via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Sadly, I did not like this. I couldn't get into it until about the 70% mark and then it didn't stay interesting. So it's basically only interesting from about 70-90% of the book. The characters were not enjoyable and I tend to dislike books with dislikable characters.

I did not like this one. I love fantasy and science fiction and half my anual readings belong to this genre, but I found this one excessively simple on the writing, unoriginal and a bit tiring, specially at the beginning with David and Mara going to the big city to be sold as slaves (something you can easily see, not a surprise there). Writer could have made the trip more eventful, more interesting, more descriptions on the characters, the mutants...Also, the background is nonexistent, there is mutants, there is people and an world that came apart somehow. The beginning also is disappointing. In YA novels you expect a young girl and a boy to be in love, or to be friends that become something else...in this case, on the third line..there you go, couple to be already there. No time to know them or like them because in three pages they are already separated so you cannot possibly feel empathy for their pain...

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher to allow me to read this, but for me, this book is a no go, I am actually glad I did not buy this on my Saturday trip to the bookshop. It simply does not reach the minimum quality to be something to enjoy

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2156144135

3.5 stars (release date Nov. 1, 2017)

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.

This was a pretty good post-apocalyptic YA Fantasy book. It's the first in a series. The worldbuilding and character building was a bit light and parts of the story is predictable, but it was still entertaining.

Sorrel lives in a small village of Amat with her mother, younger brother Eli and her baby sister. She is in love with her childhood best friend David, but isn't sure if he shares her feelings. The village is small and the villagers help each other survive. No one from he village knows much about life "Before". One day a group of mutants attacks the village and kills all of the adults and kidnaps the children while Sorrel is out of the village. She witnesses the attack from afar and as she enters the village, sees her mother and sister killed and her brother Eli taken by a mutant. She can't find David or her other friends anywhere.

Heartbroken and unsure what to do, Sorrel sets out to track the mutants in an effort to find Eli and David. She ventures further than she had ever gone and sees a whole new world, including remnants from life "Before". She runs into different groups of people that will challenge her ideas of what is right and wrong. Meanwhile David fights to survive captivity and escape so he can find Sorrel.

The story is fast paced and keeps the reader's attention. It's a quick read and I look forward to the next book in the series.

I’ve been given an ARC by Bastei Entertainment via NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.
The New Dark was really difficult to get into. Something about it just wasn’t quite there. I didn’t really get into it until about a third of the way into it.
In all honesty I had great hopes for this book but by the time I had made it through I was not a huge fan.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest and fair review.

In all honesty I had great hopes for this book but by the time I had made it through I was not a huge fan. It took me a long time to get into it, at least half way through and by the end it was dragging again.

I felt that while the writing was really good there was not enough explanation - there is no explanation as to what happened to the world as we know it and how it came the "Now".

I felt that I couldn't connect with the characters particularly the main character, it was difficult for me to understand why they would do things they would do.
The only character I truly enjoyed reading was David - the growth and determination of his character picked up the book for me.

I would recommend this to any dystopian lovers.
I would say that this is alright but unfortunately I highly doubt I will be picking up the second book.

Sorrel's life changed from one moment to another. The hard but happy life she has always know is ended by the destruction of her village by mutants. A race of sub-humans that have become twisted and scarred by a genetic defect at birth in this future time period.

The Before is our modern time. Some relics from this time still exist but life is consumed with survival now. A simple life of hunting, gathering and little travel from one community to another.

The bright side of her hardscrabble life is David. Childhood friends has blossomed into something more. Their love is interrupted by the attack on the village. Sorrel manages to escape but David and her younger brother, Eli have been kidnapped and sold into slavery.

This story is told in both Sorrel's and David's perspective, giving insight into their harrowing adventures. This works well to expand the world and the scope of the each main character's experiences.

The story has good pacing and keeps the reader moving ahead toward the true conflict that begins to arise at the end of the book, paving way for future installments. The cliff hanger ending is genius.

My one complaint is sometimes the dialogue is stilted and falls flat but all in all, I look forward to Sorrel's and David's return.

A dystopian world set in the future of humanity. This book shows what could happen if an apocalyptic event happened and the world changed, but some things never change do they.
We follow Sorelle and David who each have their own adventure trying to find each other after their families and homes are destroyed. What follows is a high stakes adventure filled with mutants, worshippers, and slaves.
A great read for anyone who enjoys future dystopian worlds.

I would describe The New Dark as more of a dystopian novel with bits of paranormal and fantasy thrown in. The beginning of the book gripped me right away. The action was intense and the book was very fast-paced which was nice. Although I couldn't really determine what year the story took place in, it must have been many many years into the future. Due to some kind of war and destruction years ago, the citizens of in this new world suffered greatly and mutants (which were really just deformed humans) were feared and often misjudged. I think that was what made this book really shine. The fact that mutants were just deformed humans who were either killed at birth or somehow escaped to live elsewhere. Although they were feared and hunted in their own way, they still had to live through prejudices. They weren't perfect nor were they monsters either.
The heroine, Sorrel was supposed to be some kind of savior of sorts but that itself was a mystery because it wasn't really explained why. The only hint was a marking on her skin showing the symbols that was later recognized as the "savior" or the hope of the future.
Sorrel, through great tragedy became separated from her family and the boy she grew to love as more than a friend. Throughout the book she was trying to find her brother and David and at times the author teased you just a bit, giving you a tiny ray of hope that she and David would reunite. But nope, the author twists the plot elsewhere and you're left with a big frown.
Sorrel is really the main character in the book although we did get to see David's point of view every so often. Sorrel was smart and cunning and her knowledge of herbs helped her and her reluctant mutant friend along the way. She was a fun character to read and develop an interest for.
The villains were written well and the author made me dislike them immediately. And even though Sorrel suffered through them, she eventually escaped from her tormentors.
The ending was a bit abrupt though as I had hoped something would have happened to bring Sorrel, her brother, and David together again. But it just sort of left it to a completely new mystery. Hopefully Ms. Thomson will finish writing a sequel because I want to know why Sorrel's skin markings are keys to being the "savior" and of course what their future will be like.