The final book in one of my favourite fantasy series’ is coming out this year, and if you’re not afraid of reading 11 chunky books with flowery language, I highly recommend it. Janny Wurts speaks to my slow-reading heart with an incredibly complex and nuanced world, compelling characters that go through the most painful experiences imaginable, and a plot as twisty and knotted as a ball of wool your toddler got to.

There is political intrigue, a constrained magic system, a sci-fi element of a second-chance world for humanity, and mythical demi-god creatures so pure and beautiful that one will actually die of happiness at the sight of them. But the one thing that truly elevates this series in my mind, is that the dichotomy of light and dark has been turned on its head—in a sideways kind of way.

This series makes me THINK. It makes me question all my assumptions and come to more nuanced and complex conclusions, see the messed-up world through the eyes of Love, and messed-up people as more than evil monsters. So it’s probably not for you if you would like to keep your nice, neat, black and white view of the world, thank you very much. It’s also not for you if you don’t want to read about the most depraved state humanity can find itself in (even if it’s presented as a horrible, negative thing). Janny takes us to some DARK places. I also cannot say it is squeaky clean—but it’s also not explicit in the modern sense. I wrote about it in [this article] if you want to know what I mean by that.

It all starts in The Curse of the Mistwraith, when half-brothers Arithon and Lysaer, who manifest the opposite elements of shadow and light, are pitted against each other by the very curse they are working together to destroy. Arithon, the master of shadow, is able to mitigate the effect the curse has on him because of his mage training, but Lysaer, whose gift of light is untrained, has no such defence. Arithon is branded the villain, when all he wants to do is to get as far away from Lysaer as possible so he doesn’t feel the overwhelming urge to kill him, whilst Lysaer is heralded as saviour, even though his vicious campaign to kill Arithon costs thousands of lives.

A shadow protagonist and a light antagonist who I can’t truly hate. It’s the best kind of grey. I really don’t understand why this series is not more well known, but there you have it!