The Dark Shore

The Dominions of Irth: 1

ISBN: 0-380-79617-1 Order from: Amazon.com

This tale of world's desperate struggle against an overpowering evil conqueror is uneven in quality but benefits from an unusual and magical world, resonating with faint echoes of Earth.

Reviewed by David on September 15, 1998

Genre: Fantasy (Evil Invasion, Demons)

Synopsis: Irth is a world of privilege and poverty, lush forests and deadly deserts. The magical and ancient civilization is powered by Charm: collected from the Heavens and crafted into amulets, manipulated like electricity and traded like gold. When an renegade returns from a dark exile, he brings with him an awful force which is immune to all Charm. Full of hatred for all life, the conqueror begins a reign of unprecedented terror, destruction and murder. A handful of refugees, young and old, some former nobles and others starving street people, all become hunted prey in a world suddenly turned into nightmare. However, for some survival is not enough as despair turns into anger and determination.

Full Review: The book traces the lives of a few characters—as the beautiful floating cities crash to the ground, and people are hunted down and slaughtered for amusement by the Cacodemons from the Dark Shore, some escape to the perilous deserts and plot the destruction of the conqueror.

The plot is relatively standard, but the world-building is not. Irth's magic is well regulated; its accumulation and use seem almost industrial in nature, a bit like plasm in Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan. However, this is only a portion of the strangeness. Irth is flat, it's possible to fall off of it into the darkness outside—darkness where other, dark worlds exist: worlds like our Earth, where magic is cold and weak. In some ways the concept reminds me of Zelazny's Amber.

The dominions of Irth, the Bright Shore, lie under the Abiding Star—the sun of Irth has more than mystical significance, it is the location of the big bang, the source of time and existence, the heaven-like destination of enlightened souls, and the fount of Charm, which accumulates on Irth before being slowly dissipated through all of space—The Dark Shore. The Night Tides lift all corpses, and many sleeping bodies, and carry them off Irth, to float forever on the Dark Shore.

The world is definitely strange, and it even ties up with Earth. Several plot strands weave though the book to converge eventually, as foreshadowed. There are some surprising twists, mostly in character roles. The scenes of diabolical tortures inflicted by the psychotic conqueror are a bit graphic in a gothic way, much like Shea's Nifft the Lean.

The mystical overtones are a bit overdone: the secrets of the Witches, the deeper significance of the Abiding Star, and even the prologue, do not quite match the more pedestrian resolutions.

The book is worth reading more for the unusual world than for the relatively standard plot. While this is a stand alone book, the second book of the Dominions of Irth, The Shadow Eater has been published. Clearly, this is too fascinating a world not to use for more than one novel.

Overall: 6; Plot: 5; Characters: 5; Style: 6.5; World-building: 7; Originality: 5.5;

ISBN: 0-380-79617-1 Order from: Amazon.com