Book Review: Eight Will Fall

Disclaimer: I have voluntarily reviewed this book after receiving a free ARC copy from the publisher via Edelweiss, thank you!

Author: Sarah Harian

Rating: 4/5

Genre: young adult, dark fantasy

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This book has been pitched as Suicide Squad meets Six of Crows and honestly? This is the most unfitting thing I’ve ever seen and sadly it made a lot of people go into the book with a false idea of what they’re going to get and end up disappointed. 

Larkin is an Empath - a person with magic power that can catalyze emotions into destruction or creation. In the city, where she lives Empaths are marginalized and feared. They are used to mine a mineral that takes away their powers, they live in poverty and are demonized by every non-magic user. This is why Larkin isn’t surprised that after she steals from a shop, the Queen’s guards come to her doorstep and arrest her and her brother. However, it quickly turns out that there’s more to her arrest than it seems. Mysterious earthquakes have been plaguing the country and people have been disappearing in holes leading deep in the ground. The Queen believes it’s the work of an Empath who’d been a long time ago banished to the Reach - a deep mine that had been closed off ever since. She sends seven Empaths and a non-magical scholar to go down into the Reach and defeat him. As they descend into the net of underground tunnels, they realize the ancient Empath may not be a legend after all and that there’s something following them. 

The strongest point of this book to me was the atmosphere - it was wonderfully suspenseful but didn’t lack those moments when the characters stumbled upon something bright and beautiful in the middle of darkness. Maybe I’m just for some reason fond of the book including a journey underground to explore unimaginable wonders and horrors hiding in the caves but it was very appealing (even though a though to actually finding myself deep in a mine fills me with dread). Additionally, there was a ton of body horror and gore so if you’re sensitive to it, I’d not recommend this book. To me, it gave the book a wonderfully creepy and suspenseful feeling and I absolutely loved it.

The characters didn’t really make it to the list of my favorites but I liked them well enough. I even rooted for the romance between Larkin and one of the other characters - their relationship was based on mutual respect and support and I was absolutely there for it. 

One thing needs to be said here - this book DOES NOT have eight POVs. It doesn’t even have multiple POVs. Everything we see is from Larkin’s point of view so if you find so many POVs intimidating, rest assured - you won’t get this here. 

I really enjoyed this book and I’ve read it in almost one sitting, however as I read I could see that it was meant to be a duology at first. Don’t get me wrong - this book had better pacing than some standalones that were actually meant to be standalone but I feel like stretching out the characters’ journey and letting them explore more of the sectors mentioned in the book would make it even more enjoyable. 

All in all, Eight Will Fall is a great, suspenseful and atmospheric book that I would recommend to anyone who carves some underground adventure and doesn’t mind a bit of gore on top of it.