Still, one point remains to be said about the style. But once this had happened, I came to view it as an enrichment to the story.

For me the style took its getting used to. I had trouble processing them, conjuring up all the images that were shot off in a mere line of words. That makes sentences such as this: „Its oversized brass fittings and and thick plates of armor glinted in the waning sunlight as it rolled through the tunnels and spider webs of rusted girders.“ In the beginning I felt overwhelmed by phrases so densely packed. Rich descriptions are caught in just a few words. His sentences are always thought-through and polished often they glitter like a sharpened diamond with many facets. Martin Kee is an impressive writer – what’s the more, he is an impressive stylist. This as a line of caution for what is to come. I will end up writing what I didn’t like about the book – precisely because I liked it so well. When I enjoyed reading a novel, I get very critical about it, because I have become interested by it, I got infected by the story. When more children begin to disappear, suspicions are raised and an unlikely search party is formed to find Skyla in the hopes that they aren’t already too late. But when her mother’s past catches up with them both, Skyla finds she must flee out of the city and into a world still recovering from a second Dark Age, a world of adults with secrets only she can see.įor a stranger has recently moved into Bollingbrook, a man some call the Pope of the South, a witch hunter to some and a hero to others. Her mother has never told her the real reasons why they must remain hidden, never explained the true dangers that exist outside the city walls. She can see people’s fears, desires, their past sins–all as swimming, living creatures. As one of the Gutter District’s nameless destitute, it has gone undiscovered that she has a unique talent: when Skyla looks at a person’s shadow she sees through it and into another world. Skyla has lived secretly within the city walls of Bollingbrook for eleven years, playing among the airship factories and trainyards. When Skyla looks at your shadow, your shadow stares back.

A Latent Dark by Martin Kee