Winter is a time of chilly temperatures and long nights. Trees stand barren without their leaves, and cloudy days cast a dreary veil over everything. It’s a season for staying inside where it’s cozy and warm. Maybe you make yourself a cup of tea. Maybe you curl up under a blanket with a book.
Rachel Gillig’s One Dark Window is the perfect novel for such a time. In this gothic fantasy, magic comes upon people like an infection. It’s even treated like a disease. A fatal one. If someone doesn’t die from the initial fever, they just might in the aftermath. Those who survive the infection are constantly hunted down by a brutal king and executed.
Enter Elspeth, a young woman who survived the childhood infection and has lived in hiding ever since. But hiding her status as an infected survivor isn’t the only secret she keeps. For every survivor gains a magical ability—one that will eventually kill them—and Elspeth’s magic inadvertently absorbed the soul of a monster. And not only does she share her thoughts and body with this mysterious creature, she grows weaker as it grows stronger. Which means that one day, Elspeth will vanish and only the nightmarish monster will remain.
In this moody, atmospheric fantasy Elspeth’s isolation as a survivor of the fever offers a, shall we say, window into this twisted world. Her father, once a man who hunted down people like her, let Elspeth live despite knowing her infected status, but the price for this is she can no longer live with him. She goes to live with her aunt’s family, but even then, she still lives apart. She admires her cousin, Ione, who represents normalcy, but who has dreams of her own that Elspeth doesn’t understand. Her uncle schemes to improve their family’s social standing and relies on Ione’s cooperation but could do without Elspeth’s inconvenient presence.
The world itself is an interesting one. Centuries past, a man known as the Shepherd King created a set of magical cards, each with a different ability. One might grant you the ability to see into someone’s mind while another might be able to make you immensely beautiful. The drawback, however, is that these cards extract a price from the user. If, for example, you use the card able to compel someone to do what you want, it makes you feel immense pain in return. In other words, there is a balance.
One Dark Window
But at some point in the past, another magical balance was broken. The Shepherd King died, his cards were scattered, and a malevolent mist began to spread across the land. As a result, the land exists in a perpetual state of dreariness and people fear the mist. It swallows people whole, and it is the source of the fever that can kill people or leave them magically changed. Even worse, the mist continues to spread and the only way to drive it back is to reunite a complete deck of the Shepherd King’s cards. It’s a near-impossible task, because one of the cards has never been seen in person and its only mention exists in a book.
As you can see, the magic system and the world that gave rise to it is both unique and vivid. The ways the characters utilize the cards are exciting and heartbreaking.
As for Elspeth, her hidden existence is forever changed when she encounters two highwaymen. These highwaymen later turn out to be a man charged with hunting down the infected and a second prince. The reason behind their second occupations as highwaymen drops her into a world of treason and an impossible task. The two men and their conspirators are collecting the magical cards themselves in hopes of assembling a complete deck. This plotline is nicely paced and provides much of the structure that keeps the book moving.
Relationships also make up another crucial aspect of One Dark Window. First, we have the relationship between Elspeth and her cousin, Ione. Ione’s motivations for wanting to marry the high prince at first seem to be foolish youthful infatuation, something that Elspeth cannot understand since she considers the king and his heir to be violent brutes of the highest order. The disagreement drives a wedge between the cousins, one that isn’t mended before Elspeth is swept up into a conspiracy and Ione collaborates with her father’s plot.
More central, however, is the romance between Elspeth and Ravyn, the sometime-hunter, sometime-highwaymen. Initially, their relationship is one of pretend, one that provides cover for her spending more time with the conspirators without drawing suspicion. But the more time the two spend together, the more it becomes obvious they have a mutual attraction built on shared experiences. Their romance unfolds slowly, Ravyn’s stoic demeanor offering a welcome foil to the wildness that Elspeth barely keeps restrained.
Which brings us to the most crucial relationship of all: Elspeth and Nightmare. The mystery of Nightmare’s true identity undercuts everything, as does the threat he represents. Yes, he has saved Elspeth multiple times from people who’d kill her. But on the flipside, the cost is that she loses a piece of herself each time he possesses her body and grants her his strength and powers. He’s harsh toward her but also protective. The dichotomy adds a bittersweet note to their otherwise contentious interactions, even moreso when we reach the final pages of the novel.
But what ties together all these various plot and character elements is Gillig’s lush prose. The evocative descriptions do much of the heavy lifting to paint the moody setting of One Dark Window. It’s impressive work for a debut novel.
One Dark Window ends on a fittingly ominous note, one which begs readers to immediately pick up the conclusion to the duology, Two Twisted Crowns. We are left with so many questions. What will become of Elspeth? Will the twelfth, and final, card ever be found? What does Nightmare ultimately want? Will Ravyn and Elspeth be all right as a couple? We can only assume, and hope, we’ll find answers to these plot threads and more in the next volume.
