In the opening chapter of “Duskborn Radiance Volume 1 - A Mother’s Question”, we are introduced to siblings Caterina, Dominic and Amadeus and their fellow villagers who are all Brethren. Watched from afar by a mysterious sorceress, all three are on the path to a destiny they cannot imagine, and may not even be ready for. This coming-of-age is set against the cosmos-spanning drama of good versus evil that is playing out in the universe around them.
Pasquale di Falco has an interesting writing style; well-suited to the fantasy genre, it takes some getting used to but if you give it a chance, the story really flows as all the usual fantasy tropes are thrown into the mix; simple folk living a simple life in a rustic village with hints of faded magic and a shadowy enemy. But this is turned on its head in the next chapter as we’re thrust into a hard-boiled sci-fi story on a cruise-ship in space, and Di Falco proves himself adept at writing for this genre too. The reader is left wondering what this has to do with the world we have just been introduced to, but the relevance soon becomes apparent. Di Falco manages to create a palpable sense of growing power, both benign and malevolent. In this sense it is very much a slow-burning story that rewards close attention, and tasks the reader to patiently discover its secrets.
The story does feel a little bogged down at times with exposition and world-building, and the history of the world is sometimes a little hard to follow, but the characters are well-realised and the story is deep and absorbing so you don’t mind the odd slow paragraph. When you get properly into the story you realise the stakes are not just high, they are stratospheric.
The story is blessed with a colourful cast of characters and alien species, including a female with a forehead a foot high. There are little character quirks such as Caterina having very long hair which she neither cuts nor washes, leading to her being admonished by her mother. The villain of the piece is wonderfully evil but also subtly nuanced, so he is much more than just a baddie.
Merely the beginning of an epic new fantasy fable, “A Mother’s Question” is a genre-busting triumph and I can’t wait to see where the series goes next.