The Dark Fable is a thrilling heist adventure written in the vein of Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows.
Evie Wilder has been orphaned since the age of eight, when her father apparently murdered her mother and two of her siblings before killing himself. Surviving on her own for ten years, she is working as a waitress when she is witness to a brawl and becomes an unwitting accomplice in a heist. Desperate to escape with her life, she calls upon an unexpected dark power – the power to hide herself in shadow.
Afterward, she is contacted by the members of the heist, and invited to join Le Fable Sombre, the Dark Fable, a society pledged to toppling kingdoms and bringing down monarchies. Enchanted by the society’s dark allure and the wealth they have at their fingertips, Evie cannot refuse the offer. But as she gets involved in heist after heist, the darkness of Le Fable Sombre begins to threaten her life, and she and her team have to make a choice: stick with the society against all the odds, or destroy the leadership intent on destroying them, and break free?
There were many things I liked about this book. It was very engaging and well written. The restrained portrayal of the romantic relationship worked for me. The characters popped off the pages, and I really liked Evie as a character. She came off as a vulnerable kind of girl hiding behind a tough-guy attitude. The other characters didn’t seem flat by comparison, but had their share of quirks and flaws that made them human.
Alternatively, there were some things I didn’t care for as much. For my taste, there was a little more language than I prefer, and there was an awful lot of violence happening. It was a little overwhelming how many times the characters were forced to fight for their lives, or how often they discussed various murders and thefts that happened within the society. The magic element was pretty cool in that the characters’ powers came from the creatures possessing them, and weren’t inherent to the characters themselves. So, I think the novel could have cut back on half the violence and still been full of action, adrenaline, and adventure.
Overall, many things going for this book. I recommend it for an older age group who would find this a quick and engaging read.
Review of an Advance Reading Copy Provided by the Publisher
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: 1 religious exclamation, 17 mild obscenities, 7 religious profanities, 18 derogatory comments, 8 scatological words, 7 anatomical terms, 3 offensive hand gestures, 14 f-word derivatives.
Violence/Gore: A significant amount of violence and gore (200+ instances), including but not limited to a memory of a monster coming to kill a character and her siblings, and the monster “wears” her father’s face; many different times when people speak about or report thefts; characters brawl at a party gone wrong; characters steal a necklace and throw it at a nearby character; a character is pursued and somehow conjures a magical “shadow” she hides inside; a character and her coworker think they are being robbed, and the coworker tries to grab a knife before they hide in a cabinet together; many instances where a character’s parents are said to be dead; report of a car accident; a girl is chased up to her apartment by a resident “brute”, and after she locks herself inside her apartment he and his sidekicks hammer and kick at the door, shouting at her; report of a man killing his wife and himself, with two of his three children missing and presumed dead; a character has a memory of her father’s temper and psychiatrists identifying her with dissociation for imagining her father as a monster who killed her family; a girl is confronted by a robber with a gun and uses her power to disappear; a character accuses people of stalking her; a girl gets knocked down and almost kicked; a girl is pursued by a man; a character with magic abilities backflips out a window and the man chasing her loses his balance and falls out after her and is later said to probably need a full body cast; a girl has a picture featuring a woman stabbing her own thigh; report of a boy being locked in a closet by an abusive adult, and a girl almost being assaulted by two teenage boys; a girl talks about how her dad threw her off a bridge; report of a character poisoning someone who killed a friend of his; report of characters ending up in an ER after a character used potions on them; character tells a story of a father who cut off his daughter’s fingers to save himself; report of a character being thrown from a penthouse high rise; report of a man found shot in the head; characters describe the night a girl died and how her boyfriend broke one bodyguard’s neck, shattered the spine of another, and flung the last out a window; many instances of characters fighting, punching, kicking, hitting, brawling, etc.; many instances where characters talk about different murders, suicides, deaths, and thefts; characters are accused of rebelling against an order, and the one captured rebel is branded on the hand; characters are confronted by a chained tiger; characters steal designer clothes and one character claims stealing is in her nature; report of a mansion burning down; report of guillotine executions, the murder of a child, and a sorcerer’s curse; a character reports feeling dizzy and that her companion is down and spitting blood, and when other characters arrive one character hunches over and gags while another is hit with vertigo and nausea; characters get burned by chemicals poured on a treasure; characters set of a trap and fall into a pit, and a character reveals how his mother’s boyfriend locked him in a cupboard for three days; a character thinks a child was sacrificed to become a location’s guardian; characters fight rivals in a church, with two main characters seeming sick, one having blood trickle from his mouth; rival characters are intent on paying other characters back for stealing a job from them, with a main character spraying sleeping potion at rivals, a rival boy brandishing a knife, and both teams punching and hitting each other; a boy shoves a girl up against a pillar and smacks her across the face, a girl knees a boy while another girl breaks the boy’s nose with a shoe; a character hits two attackers with a baseball bat; a girl slips on a roof and nearly falls to her death; a character confronts a rival and it is implied he kills his rival with a poison ring; a society was founded to collapse kingdoms and destroy monarchies; a girl starts seeing dead people; a character shows someone unmarked graves where the people in charge of Le Fable Sombre secretly kill traitors after branding them, and claims he and a girl were to be killed for wanting to run away from the society; a character has a gun in a purse; a character relates a story where he tried to save a dog and ran in front of a semi, then fell into a spinning darkness where, upon coming out, he found himself holding the dog which was dead and twisted up; characters talk about the darkness in the world that made their powers manifest; a character reports how two people fled an organization, two people became killers, and three former members of LFS were killed; a girl is afraid of a boy; a character’s lacerated cheek is stitched up; a character talks about teams losing members through supposed accidents and getting replacement members who have powers; characters are in danger and plot to kill the people trying to kill them; report of a character scheming to get into LFS to revenge the deaths of her family; a character gives a friend a poison ring; a character reports a heist going wrong, his team getting chased by an army, and the “unfortunate” death of a rival character; characters realize they are possessed and speak of the things that live inside them and give them their powers; characters are given a job that will likely end in their deaths; a character reports being responsible for someone spinning out and crashing, and losing the ability to do almost everything; characters break into a house; many instances where characters threaten characters or are threatened by characters; a character knocks out two armed assailants with golf clubs; a character offers to sacrifice her teammates in exchange for her siblings’ lives; a character is chased by a shadow monster; a character is fatally bitten by a nightmare snake and dragged back into the darkness between worlds; a character steals her friends’ powers; a man threatens to kill a boy’s friends; a character strikes someone with a baseball bat while a character stabs at other characters, shots are fired, a character is bashed over the head with a statuette, characters punch and fight, and girl steals someone’s power as he is about to crush another character’s windpipe; a character is slammed backward by a magical force; a girl is shot by a woman, the woman is shot in retaliation, and a girl jumps off the roof with the woman; a character is revealed to have killed someone with his demon, and sacrificed two other friends in order to get his team to turn on their leaders; a character drags a girl with him into the Wild Dark; a character strikes another character so hard she falls to one knee and tastes blood; a girl is poisoned; a monster attacks a character, stabbing him through the chest and dragging him back into the Wild Dark; a character almost dies, but is saved by an antidote injected into her heart; character enact a jailbreak.
Sex/Nudity: A few instances of sex and nudity, including but not limited to a woman wearing a necklace which snakes across her cleavage; a girl tucks stolen money into her bra; a group of guys catcall a girl; a girl calls someone’s husband a “hottie” (not sexual); a girl thinks a boy is lovely; a character sees a picture of two boys kissing a girl; a character claims a place has become boring with people who only want to get into each other’s intimates; a boy and girl dance, and the girl refuses to let herself think about a boy’s hands in her or how good he smells; a character is reported as a courtesan and a disgraced daughter; a girl is aware of her slight curves against a boy’s angles (not overly sexual); a girl tells a boy to play drunk, they cling together, he kisses her neck and she thinks he feels so warm; a boy tells of the girls he fell in love with; a character mentions a painting of a naked girl; a boy wants to live on a vineyard with a sassy French boy or girl (implication of bisexuality); female characters pretend to be a couple; a boy with bare feet and an unbuttoned shirt sits near a girl while she sleeps (sexual tension); report of a society’s predecessors being two “mothers” instead of the usual Father Silence and Mother Night; a boy dances with a boy, and then a girl (implication of bisexuality); a boy and a girl go to the boy’s apartment; there is a statue seen of a naked woman; report of characters having children, with the woman described as being “round as a moon”; a girl “pretend flirts” with a boy; a girl cuts off a piece of her slip to wrap it around a boy’s bleeding midriff, and feels his velvety skin (sexual tension); mention of a man and his boyfriend; a boy cups a girl’s face in his hands, they embrace so she feels his hard muscles against her softness, they kiss, he slides to his knees with his face pressed to her stomach, and he bunches up her dress as she grips his shoulder blades under his shirt (very sexual, but no sex occurs); a boy tells a girl he wants her; girls disguise themselves as boys; girls shed their male disguises and straighten designer dresses while boys look away; a character’s dress is torn from her as she falls through a magical Door conjured by another character; a girl, flimsily dressed in a black slip, confronts a boy.
Mature Subject Matter:
Death of family members; murder; suicide; theft; physical and emotional child abuse; underage drinking/smoking.
Drugs/Alcohol Use:
Pink champagne is spilled over a girl; a girl imagines chucking a wine bottle at someone’s head; a girl blots at a champagne stain; a girl asks another girl if she wants a fancy drink smuggled out to her; report of spilled champagne, a man pours himself a glass of “bubbly”; a character notices a red liquor shop sign; a character holds a vape pen; a girl puffs out a breath of vape smoke; report of a character getting birth control; a girl asks another girl if she has any booze in her apartment; a bar holds a collection of expensive liquor; report of a dad drinking a lot; a character has a bottle of expensive champagne in the fridge; a boy tells a girl she should drink more and pours her a glass of wine; a character pretends to be drunk; a boy goes to get a girl a drink; a place reeks of spilled alcohol; there is mention of wine; a character wonders if he was once drunk; a character makes a potion to stun people; there is mention of a bar; a girl holds a glass of champagne; characters drink and smoke; a character pops open and drinks from a bottle of beer; a girl drinks more than she intends to; a girl accepts a bottle of beer; a character claims someone has the best booze; characters get drinks at a nightclub, ordering two bourbons; a girl orders a bottle of bourbon and proceeds to get someone drunk in order to pry information from him; a girl pretends to be drunk; glasses of wine litter an empty party room; a character grabs a bottle of chardonnay; a girl sucks a lollipop that tastes of champagne; a man orders a bourbon; a character downs a shot of bourbon; a character drinks a bottle of beer; a cooler is packed with snacks and beer; a beer bottle dangles between a character’s fingers; a character holds a brimming wineglass; a character swigs from a bottle; a character sees a masculine hand holding a glass of liquor; a character grabs at a bar cart as he falls, shattering bottles and spilling alcohol; a character holds a liquor bottle; a character downs liquor; report of a place once being a speakeasy.
