Fade to Black by Francis Knight

Fade to Black was a good but not great novel. It paints a good picture of a bleak, dystopian world. In a city where electricity and power comes in the form of magic provided by pain mages, who draw their power from physical hurt, either their own or that of others, the lowest of the low class live under ground. The higher up people are in wealth and class, they literally live higher up in buildings that are built massively huge, piled on top of each other. There is a deep, dark conspiracy afoot, one in which Rojan Dizon finds himself right in the middle of. Rojan is a pain mage and bounty hunter, who keeps his magic a secret, although it’s not a very well kept secret. Rojan is forced to go to the pit, where the lowest of the low live in search of his kidnapped niece.



There were things I liked about the novel and things that didn’t work for me. On the plus side, I think the author successfully builds a nice bleak atmosphere to the novel. The writing fits the mood and works well. There are some good plot turns, and decent conspiracies. On the negative side, Rojan is a pretty bad character. It’s hard to have much respect for him when there were so many obvious things happening that should have been obvious to him and he was completely clueless about. It’s hard to get into a novel with a weak protagonist who I found to be generally unlikeable. The novel ends with a bang. I also liked the whole simulated fighting that they had in the pits that reminded me of pro wrestling with weapons. I would give this novel a thumbs up, but not an enthusiastic one.