Absolutely loved this book! Ed Crocker did a fantastic job of world-building, keeping the reader interested, and throwing in twists that you don't see coming.

I'm looking forward to the next book in this series! I would read it now, if I could.

My full spoiler-free review is posted on YouTube https://youtu.be/Mu6OSe2oAKk?si=kAq8xn1z83LrUGL0

This was amazing! I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley, however I did end up borrowing the audiobook from the library and listened to about half of it while following along with the ARC. As always, all opinions are my own.

The audiobook has a single narrator, and while I thought she did a wonderful job, I do think this is the type of audiobook that would have benefited from multiple narrators or even a full cast as there are so many characters.

It has been quite a while since I've come across a unique fantasy book, and this has alot going on to make it so. This is a tad on the long side, but it crosses several genres and follows a cast of characters to keep the reader invested and wondering "What the heck is going on?" Some readers are going to hate the way this is structured as it jumps around from character to character within the chapters, while others are going to love it. I loved it and didn't mind the character jumps as each piece of the story was relevant and eventually leads somewhere. This follows several of our main characters as main perspective, and there are some random side character and truly random perspectives thrown in throughout. Each perspective brings something to the table and were clearly thought out. If you aren't a fan of alot of characters and genre blending they may not be the book for you, but I thought the author did a great job keeping things moving forward and moving each of the intertwining plots organized without giving too much away too quickly.

This has court politics, magic, vampires, sorcerers, werewolves, a murder mystery, and more all rolled up into fantastical tale. I thought the world building was excellent as this takes place mainly in First Light, home of First Lord Azzuri who is one of our main players. It is home to the vampire race that survived a long ago war. There are some other locations as well that are well described and the backstory that we get regarding Lightfall and Greyfall are also well told, though I still think there is more information to come. First Light is full of secrets especially when the First Lord's youngest son turns up dead under mysterious circumstances. His spymaster and captain of the guard don't seem very invested in uncovering information, when two sorcerers from the desert with no magical abilities show up under the guise of research and a palace maid team up to figure out what is going on. Sage and Jacob belong to a sorcerer cult dedicated to finding proof that mortals once existed, but they will never admit what they know. Sam is a maid who has revenge on her mind and wants to be more than a to clean for spoiled lords and ladies for the rest of her life. The three of them find themselves caught up in an investigation bigger than themselves and on quite the adventure to start a rebellion within the vampire city and to stop the mysterious Greys who are determined to wipe out the vampire race entirely.

I loved this. I was completely invested in this book. It felt a bit on the long side, but that is because there are so many characters and complexities to keep track of. This delivered on all of the things I love in a more epic fantasy. The pacing was good, there was action and conflict to keep you invested. I enjoyed the characters and while we have sorcerers, the two main ones don't have magic so we don't really need any explanation of the magic system to complicate things. There other types of sorcerers but the author does briefly explain their abilities. He did do a good job of explaining how the types of blood works for the vampires and the commerce system which I thought was really well thought out. I can't wait for the rest of the series! I hope to see this book pick up more popularity as the year goes on within the fantasy community.

Move over urban fantasy, here are vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers in a secondary world murder mystery with fabulous worldbuilding and three-dimensional characters despite the huge ensemble of narrators. My favorite part was probably the capitalistic blood system, a twist on the usual vampiric blood-drinking that lets characters take on certain enhanced senses/powers from the ordinary or not-so-ordinary creatures whose blood they drink - with of course the best blood reserved for the rich who can afford it.

In this magical, unequal world, the maid Sam attempts to better her lot in life - and at times just survive - as she and a variety of other characters seek to untangle a mysterious murder. Along the way, several historical mysteries are mentioned but not always solved, presumably because they will be explored more in future books). Most intriguing of all is the mystery of the creatures who have taken over most of the world and shut everyone up in the city in the first place - where they came from, why, and what exactly they want.

Lightfall by Ed Crocker is an immersive and ambitious debut that blends vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers with a rich tapestry of political intrigue and rebellion. The worldbuilding is truly remarkable—dark, detailed, and brimming with history and class dynamics that shape every layer of the story. From the rigid vampire society of First Light to the looming threat of the Grays, the Everlands feel alive, dangerous, and utterly compelling.

Sam, the protagonist, is a character you can’t help but root for. Her determination to escape her harsh reality as a scullery maid and take control of her fate is inspiring, and her wit and resilience make her stand out in a world full of immortals. Sage, the enigmatic sorcerer, provides a fascinating counterbalance to her grit, and their partnership unfolds with just the right mix of tension and intrigue.

The murder mystery drives the plot forward, but the true strength of the book lies in its twists and turns. Crocker doesn’t shy away from surprises, and just when you think you have the story figured out, it takes an unexpected—and thrilling—direction. The characters, too, are a highlight, with even the villains crafted so well that you love to hate them. And Allana? She’s an absolute powerhouse of a character, adding a sharp edge to an already compelling ensemble.

With its atmospheric world, morally complex characters, and a plot that keeps you guessing, Lightfall is a strong debut that’s perfect for fans of dark, character-driven fantasy. I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel—I need to know what happens next!

I had a really hard time trying to read this book as I was in a reading slump from December, I also think I'm just not as into reading about vampires as much anymore. I also had a hard time with the multiple povs every chapter, swapping between them very much made me feel I was reading more chapters than was listed. Maybe I'll try picking up and reading this again at a later date to see if I liked it more then.

The idea of a caste system of sorts among vampires along with mystery elements was intriguing. Unfortunately for me, it did not come together well. My main issues were the writing style- multiple first person narratives were jarring and would have read better in 3rd person. The characters were not dynamic and the mystery was kinda boring. Dialogue was meh. Overall, slow moving and I most likely will not be continuing the rest of the series.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

The originality behind this world building is definitely impressive. I am wary of vampire and werewolf novels as so many seem to play on the same tropes, but this one did something entirely new, which was refreshing. I would like to have known more about the history of the world that Crocker built here, but I suppose more of that will follow in the next books. I went into this thinking it was a standalone, which was probably my own fault for not looking closely enough, but I was definitely disappointed to know that it was, in fact, the beginning of a series, so no answers are immediately forthcoming. There are small answers to immediate questions, but not the answers that I wanted.

There are plenty of characters here to root for, which I love. The POV switches quite a bit, and some of the POVs that you are getting are not necessarily likable characters, which is fun. There are quite a few bad ass ladies to root for, which is always a plus for me. That being said, if you like moral greyness or ambiguity in your cast, then this one is absolutely not for you. There are the goodies, and there are the baddies, and there is no question as to which is which (with one possible exception, but it's such a minor character that I don't think it counts).

The plot is where I felt this book let itself down a bit. It moved VERY slowly, and I think a heavier editing hand could have been applied to make it a more enjoyable read. I wanted to know the story, but the plot took too long to get me there. There were also quite a few grammatical errors in the writing that I hope were fixed before final publication, because it was utterly distracting.

Overall, this book was fine. There were things I liked - the world, the characters, the story, and things I didn't like - the writing and the slow movement of the plot. It was good, not great.

Sam is a Worn vampire, the lowest of the classes, subject to the weakest animal blood, and cursed with aging. She, however, has a spark in her that, after the death of the First Lord’s youngest son, leads her to connect with the Leeches. This movement to help the lower class rise up opens her to a world beyond First Light and the mysteries of the mortals and immortals that she has only read about in secret. Will this knowledge save her or be her doom?

Lightfall is more than a vampire novel — the politics, class structure, and greater world of the immortals is fascinating. The world building done in this novel opens up a breadth of opportunity for some amazing storytelling in the subsequent. The workings of the vampire city alone are well layered, and mixed with the greater story of the mortals and immortals they are perfect. There were a couple slower spots in the delivery, but nothing that was an issue for me. I cannot wait for the next novel. 5 stars.

Based on a digital Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an honest review. Thank you!

I wanted to like this book so badly! When I heard it was similar to Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff, I was all in—but unfortunately, I let those expectations get the better of me and ended up disappointed.

If you’re a fan of Dungeons & Dragons featuring a random mixture of characters teaming up—not because they want to, but because they have to—then this might be for you. The book leans heavily on dialogue rather than action and focuses more on political intrigue and debate than epic battles (the only battles happen at the end of the book) or fast-paced adventure.

While the story is told through multiple POVs, I felt like Crocker relied too much on dialogue for world-building rather than giving readers a better sense of the setting. Since I wasn’t fully invested in all the characters, the narrative felt a bit slow and a little too snoozy for me.

I typically don’t like toward books without romance, but Lightfall by Ed Crocker really surprised me. I ended up enjoying it a lot.

I enjoy a book with vampires and werewolves, and magic users. In Lightfall by Ed Crocker, we enter a story which starts as night blankets the land and the creatures of the night thrive. The reason they seem to thrive is because there don't seem to be mortals or humans, so they prey on each other. It's a pretty unique perspective and I was quickly hooked as the story played out.

The story opens as the son of a vampire ruler is slain by The Greys". However, we, the reader, do not learn much about The Greys very quickly and they are an even more mysterious and ominous force than the supernatural creatures we've been taught to fear.

Sam, is a palace maid with abundant curiosity, tons of family tragedy, and a job that is just non-descript enough to blend into the background as she joins an underground group of maids.

There is quite a lot going on in this book, but I thought it was well worth the read. There seems to be a hierarchy with vampires at the top, but the mysterious Greys are thinning the herd and keeping the elites in check.

Since this is listed as book 1 of The Everland Trilogy, i am interested to see where we go with the story and what other mysteries we will be unravelling. It's not a perfect book but it's very entertaining and worth the time. I'll be looking for the next book and I hope you will too.

2.75 ⭐️ (rounded to 3)

I got excited to read this when the blurb mentioned that Lightfall was for fans of the Empire of the Vampire series. A book about vampires and werewolves in a world where humans don’t exist. The concept of the book was intriguing and the magic and blood-drinking system was unique to me. With that said, Lightfall really fell a bit flat for me.

I did not connect with any of the characters. They felt flat and one-dimensional. There were too many POV’s and it felt like there was minimal amount of character building because of this. I think maybe it would have been better to focus on fewer characters and really dig in and expand their backstory and characteristics. Maybe have a bigger divide between main characters and side characters. The dialogue between the characters also didn’t click with me. It didn’t feel very realistic and kind of pulled a bit juvenile and YA at times.

There was a lot of world building, which isn’t a problem in itself with a fantasy book. My issue is with how it was done. The world building felt clunky and I feel like too much information kept being dictated on the page rather than being shown by the actions and dialogue of the characters. There was also too much world building in the dialogue, and sometimes I would find one character speaking for a whole page about their back story. Not ideal.

In terms of pacing, I think too much time was dedicated to solely world-building. I was almost at the 70% mark by the time any action was finally starting to happen in the book. The story was stagnant for way too long and that is why I found myself struggling to keep motivated to keep reading at times.

I hate to be so negative and I see the vision with this book and the whole concept is really cool and something I haven’t seen before. I just didn’t click with this book and, too many times, I found myself being pulled out of the story by the writing-style. This one was just not for me and I will not be continuing with the series.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing this book for review via NetGalley!

I’ll start this with saying after much debate and reading that if you are a huge Empire of the Vampire fan……you might not find this book as enjoyable as those of us who didn’t quite fall madly in love with Empire.
This book is a lot…..a lot of information……a lot of time spent explaining all the different immortal groups and those within those groups. Not going to lie I struggled a bit for the first 30%…….but by the end I found myself grinning and laughing out loud. The characters are just fun. Yes they all heavily into their characterizations but that is what makes it into the kind of story it is. I’m actually really excited to see where the series goes from here. And honestly the only reason it wasn’t a 5 star read for me was just because of the heaviness of that first part of the book.
Overall a solid 4.5/5 stars for me.
I received an ARC of this title, all opinions are my own.

On paper, I should have loved everything about this novel. I've been a vamp fan even when vampires weren't fashionable. Werewolves and sorcerers? They only add to my enjoyment. The prologue promised an action-packed novel and an intriguing mystery. And then the pacing all but flat-lined for me. The story was bogged down by a lot of repetition in unneeded dialogue and info dumps. Looking at other reviews, I'm in the minority, so I know there's a wide audience who enjoyed this novel, but it just wasn't for me.

Lightfall is book one by Ed Crocker and I gave it a 3.5⭐️. I felt like it had a very slow start but part of that was my fault. I’ve had a lot of challenges lately and this book probably didn’t get the attention it deserved. But back to the book it start out with a slow intro the main characters and what they can and cannot do. What they are and how they live. The world building was solid and 70% on was fast paced and had actions and twists. The last part is almost a 5 star in my opinion.
Thanks St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley.

A slow start gets in the way of an intriguing start to an epic fantasy about vampires, sorcerers, werewolves, and a mysterious force known as the Grays which has forced the vampires from much of their territory. This is a book whose story is told through multiple points of view, so expect many different characters to take the lead (which can be a major hurdle for some readers). I particularly liked Sam's chapters, who is a bookish vampire struggling with secrets and a desire for more than a low-born life offers her, and I also liked the werewolf assassin character whose plot goes some unexpected places. If the reader can be patient for enough of the worldbuilding and scene setting to get established, there is a novel full of political intrigue, ancient secrets, and an uncertain future just waiting to be discovered.

As a lover of Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Vampire, (EotV) the premise of this book immediately caught my interest. EotV is one of my favorite books so Lightfall had big shoes to fill by making the direct comparison. For the most part, I think it was a stretch, but not completely off the mark in appealing to an audience that likes to read a different take on an old trope.

For a debut novel, I would rate Lightfall as slightly above average. It has a very good premise and generally the plot flowed well, but it suffered from two very big problems- clunky pacing and too many POVs. There were parts that seemed to lull and meander which was not helped by the constantly changing POVs. It felt like Crocker was trying to show everything that was happening to everyone at once, rather than letting us infer what was going on. Because of the sheer amount of POVs, I feel like we didn't really get to wonder what was happening elsewhere. If you wanted to know what the sorcerer was thinking during one scene, don't worry, it would come up in the next chapter.

For things done well, the character that most people seem to like the most- Sam, was well thought out. She seemed to have the most depth out of all the characters and she was the one I was most invested in. I think if the author had spent more time writing from her POV and less from everyone else, I would have given the book a higher rating. A majority of the other characters fell flat for me in comparison.

I also enjoyed the magic system and the way Crocker wrote about class structures being a direct result of the different bloods. There was a lot of world-building and history that went into creating the world that we're reading about today. Each class- vampire, wolf, and sorcerer also felt very distinct and well thought out. To me, it seems like the author has a very well thought out plan for this series and all the events will tie together. The ending was well executed, if not just a little *too* tidy. It sets up the next part of the series but doesn't feel like a cheap cliff hanger meant to drive sales for the next book.

Overall, I think this is a great start for debut novel and Crocker has the potential to really improve from here. I'm curious to see how his writing style advances in the next books.

Lightfall is book one in The Everlands trilogy by Ed Crocker.
A dark fantasy murder mystery that gripped me from the very beginning.
The action and adventure were captivating and had me flipping the page’s.
The writing flowed nicely, and it was easy to read.
A brilliant and engaging story and I can’t wait for the second one.

'Lightfall' by Ed Crocker single-handedly did something no other book has ever done. It convinced me that I've been making a mistake by insisting on finishing books whether or not I enjoy them. Not only is it a waste of my time, it makes me not want to read at all for awhile because I've forced myself to finish what I started and been miserable all along the way. That doesn't mean I'll put one down easily, but when I'm certain it's not going to improve for me.. I'm going to call it.

That being said, I'm calling it here for this one. I will not rate this book except in cases where it's required, as I didn't finish it and that's not fair to the author. So any site that requires one, will simply receive a median 3-stars. But I do have a lot of thoughts already and I'm probably sparing everyone by sharing what I have so far instead of adding to it.

I was really excited to give this book a try. I love a great vampire story, I loved the idea of what a normalized world would look like for them and other immortals from a sociopolitical point of view. Conceptually, this story held a lot of promise. And from a purely technical standpoint, there's nothing wrong here with the structure of the material. It is not a bad book, it's a book I did not like.. though despite the technical soundness of its form, it definitely has weaknesses.

Honestly, I expected it to be some dense, high-fantasy tale.. between the synopsis and the 'for fans of' tags, but it was not. It lacked the intellectual nature of such stories and frankly seemed more like an attempt of mimicking them.

There is a constant attempt at banter that just never lands. The dialogue is weak, filled with unimaginative 'quips' implied to carry some cleverness. The characters lack any real sense of substance and aren't even charismatic enough to inspire interest in me.

The author is overly obsessed with details that don't matter to begin with, let alone to the degree he addresses them. Paragraphs full of excessive specificity about who is drinking what every time they move and directional explanations that double back on themselves so much they end up sounding more like a Monty Python skit than world-building. It's exhausting and it feels lazy. It feels like an author just trying to put as many words on a page as possible to fill them and it bored the hell out of me.

It's told in a multiple-pov narrative, which always requires some level of control.. in my opinion. Unfortunately, since these characters are already so one-dimensional, they certainly don't have any unique voice of their own and regardless of the brief indicator at the top of a switch as to who we're reading, it all runs together.

I'm just so glad my journey with 'Lightfall' is over. I don't know what book people were reading to call it things like "wildly entertaining" or "exciting," but it couldn't have been this one. Nor do the "brilliant dialogue" comments hold true. If this is brilliant dialogue for you.. then you need to meet new people.

On the bright side, it is only a debut and the author could improve. After all, there's nowhere to go but up.

Thank you net gallery for the advanced copy of this book. I enjoyed reading this and would recommend. The world building was initially kind of weird but by the end you realize it was built on some wrong beliefs. It almost seems like a reality show for the mortals to watch from afar. It starts off as a murder mystery and then turns into something else.