Great Potential...
I picked this book up at a Half-Price Bookstore about three years ago; it wasn't the first of its genre--raw fantasy--that I'd read, being a fan of Tad Williams and the ever famous J.R.R. Tolkein, and from reading the back cover, not to mention the cover art which I loved, I thought I'd be sucked in.
Basically, from the get-go, this book was a disappointment. I hardly remember the plot, but I know it had something to do with an absent magic returning due to the siege of the evil Red Monks, and the focal point of the magic's return is somehow tied into a boy named Rafe. While i loved the name, Rafe came across as an empty intended her, the conduit for magic the likes of which we've seen before--you know, that typical, average, ordinary boy with EXTRAordinary powers--the sort of placeholder who you're meant to love, but are unable to simply because he shows little personality at all, ala Bella Swan. He also reminded me a great deal of Eragon; in fact, the whole beginning of the novel did.
Lebbon's big mistakes I can categorize into two parts: he had too large of a cast. Now, for most fantasy writers, this is a slippery slope. Some, like Tolkien, Williams and George R.R. Martin, handle it well, tying all the narratives together. I remember liking maybe one or two of Lebbon's characters, and they received a surprising lack of "screentime", as it were. The escaped criminal Kosar was one of the few characters I could stomach, but even he fell out of my liking as the book wore on. They were all just too flat, too similar to one another.
The second mistake was Lebbon's writing style. Now, I understand that this is supposed to be a horror/fantasy novel, but what was meant to be "edgy" and "dark" came across to me simply as poor writing, using modern slang like "screw" instead of something that sounds more in place, such as "wenching". I also am aware that fantasy books do tend to be a bit more...blunt than, say, a young adult novel like Harry Potter. Yes, there are sexual things in Dusk, and even in fantasy novels I hold favor with. But describing a woman's vagina as a "gaping black maw sliced into the earth" is really just a bit over the top, in my opinion. Surely you can think of something more tasteful than that? It just seemed that the description of sexual things could have been better handled, or mentioned less often. At times, if there was a drag in the plot, something of sexual nature was thrown in almost as though to remind the reader that, "Hey, there's something worthwhile here!"
Another thing that bothered me was Hope. Now, Hope was an old hag whose connection to Rafe I don't quite remember, but I seem to recall her molesting him in some way, or threatening to. Later on, she becomes one of his guardians and he's perfectly fine with that.
Uh. No thank you, Lebbon. I don't find that okay at all, that this young boy is traveling around with an old woman who clearly misbehaves around him. That was about the point where I just skipped to the end of the book to see if it got any better.
It didn't. The Red Monks ripped Rafe's brain out and ate it.
My reaction: "WHAT JUST HAPPENED?"
Literally, within a few pages, it goes from a battle to someone sucking Rafe's brain out and then the Red Monks escaping on some sort of hovercraft with his body while his friends vow to retrieve him. I just closed the book and sat there for a minute, stewing over that. I never picked it up again and took it back to the bookstore shortly thereafter.
This book was not a plot fail. In the hands of another author--one more adept at building characters, hastening the plot, giving good description and so forth, it would have been epic. But Lebbon just didn't have what it takes, and the whole of the book fell flat for me by the end. I understand there was a sequel to the book but honestly, I couldn't have stomached it. It was all too much for me.