Beyond Night by Eric S. Brown and Steven L. Shrewsbury – A Book Review

Blurb:

An Epic Fantasy tale of action, adventure, heroism, horror and sorcery…

Beyond Night is a Dark Fantasy Horror novel that pulls back the veil of nearly two thousand years of jaded history. Come trod in the bloody footprints left by monsters, soldiers and wizards and behold what lies hidden Beyond Night itself.

It’s Bigfoot War mixed with Lovecraftian horror on the edge of the Roman Empire.

How could Rome lose a Legion? What could’ve happened to blot out the existence of over five thousand men not only from history but the Earth itself?

As the Legion moves north to engage the forces of Pictdom, a dark horror emerges from the bowels of the Earth. Thought to be random attacks by hulking monsters, Decurion August soon learns a dire truth, that these bloody events are directed by opposing the wizards of the Picts. While one side assembles all tribes in a confederated army to battle the Legion, the other pulls these Greyman beasts from the depths of the Earth.

August fights not only these creatures and workers of magicks, but internal passions in the Legion itself.

Can he discover a way to survive the enormous bloodletting about to take place that will only serve to satisfy the wizards of Pictdom?

 

Authors: Eric S. Brown & Steven L. Shrewsbury

Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing

Pages: 272

Release Date: 26/01/2018

Genre: Horror

My Chosen Format: Kindle

My Rating of ‘Beyond Night’: 2 out of 5 stars

Purchase: Amazon UK, Amazon US

 

Review:

I was offered a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is a book that, when seeing the advertising done by Crystal Lake, I was incredibly excited for. I am a massive lover of ancient history and all things paranormal. So when I saw that there was a book that pitted the romans against an army of Bigfoot … well, I was over the moon. Even more so when I was offered the chance to review it.

Sadly, my excitement was ill-placed. Admittedly, the review copy I got was an unedited version, so I shall not mark this book low for the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors I came across. I will, however, mark it low for claiming it features romans and pretty much having them be as un-romanlike as one could imagine. Everything from the slang they used to their total lack of discipline towards superior officers just smacked of anything but the well-drilled men of Rome. When I refer to slang, I mean the use of the word ‘Savvy’. If I were to just pretend the word was not created in the late 18^th century and was one of the few words to not have any root in the Latin language, then it still would have sounded alien coming out of the roman mouths as often as it did. But, the overuse of a word that didn’t crop up until 1785 just kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

I also thought they could have referenced some of Rome’s exploits more than they did. They are, after all, a fiercely proud warrior nation. As it was, it just felt like soldiers wearing roman garb than actual romans. I just came away with a sense that it hadn’t been well-researched.

There were aspects of the book I enjoyed. For the most part, the combat was described incredibly well. There was one battle (between Porcius and ‘The Greyman’) that was quite possibly the worst fight scene I have ever read. Beyond that, it was top notch as far as descriptive writing in battles go. I also liked the character of August. The parts in which he featured were always interesting and kept me turning the pages.

To be fair, the start was good and kept me interested. When you first see the romans go up against the unknown entities that turn out to be the bigfoot army, I was constantly wondering what would happen next. How would they get themselves out of this impossible situation etc …

But then it just felt like it dragged. I got halfway through and already felt as though it was going on too long (considering the relative shortness of this ‘epic’ it could have been due to my not enjoying it that it felt like this for me). For me, there was too many POVs; whether they were roman or from the pict/druid side of things. It just felt like more and more POVs were used to make the book longer and force on it the label of ‘epic fantasy’. Or to make the plot more complex than it needed to be.

There have been a fair amount of reviews and ratings for this on Amazon and Goodreads giving it 4 or 5 stars so perhaps my opinion is a severe minority. But I just couldn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Which is a shame as, given the gorgeous, absolutely glorious cover art, I was hoping it would be a book that I devoured and yearned for more.