The Great Devouring Darkness

The Shivered Sky #3

by Matt Dinniman

The Epic Conclusion of the Shivered Sky Saga!. 

For so many of this world, the idea of an afterlife is a comforting one. You live, you die, and you are rewarded with an eternity of joy and peace. But for Indigo, life after death is a nightmare beyond comprehension. Naked, afraid, and with only snippets of memory, she comes into the afterlife to find that Heaven is in ruins. The angels are gone, hunted to the brink of extinction. Terrible monsters roam free. Demons control the sky. The great city burns.

God is gone.

Humans, the ones who are caught, are nothing more than livestock. A resistance exists, but it is weak, unorganized, and all but defeated. For the demons, they struggle to maintain order amongst themselves. An occupying force is a restless one.

Indigo and her human companions only have one choice. They must fight.

Told from the point of view of humans, angels, and demons, this is an epic, sweeping tale told in three parts.

In part three, yet another war is brewing. But this time, the winner takes all.  

This book is part three of three. This is a refresh, re-edit, and re-release of Matt Dinniman's original novel, The Shivered Sky. This author-preferred version of the story includes a glossary of terms, names, and creature types.

Genres: Fantasy

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 7, 2020

About the author

Matt Dinniman is the best-selling writer and artist from Gig Harbor, Washington. He is the published author of dozens of short stories and a gaggle of books. In addition, his art publications—from greeting cards to stationery kits to calendars—can be found in boutique and stationery shops around the world. Also, he strongly feels like a pretentious twat when he writes about himself in third person.

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Praise Moloch we are done

[Reuben Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful, brooding story that leans heavily into atmosphere and tension…

The Great Devouring Darkness trades Dinniman’s trademark chaos for something slower, more deliberate, and deeply unsettling. The world he builds feels ancient and vast, a place where dread seeps through every detail and silence carries its own menace.

The narrative’s strength lies in its mood… it’s oppressive, haunting, and strangely beautiful in its bleakness. The pacing drags slightly in parts, and a few sections could have benefited from tighter editing, but the overall execution remains strong. Dinniman’s prose is controlled and evocative, painting a vivid picture of both external horror and internal decay.

While not his most explosive work, this book stands out for its restraint and emotional weight.

It’s an intelligent, unsettling read that rewards patience… proof that Dinniman can command just as much power through silence and shadow as through action and intensity.

[DrDaps · Rating 5 out of 5]

This trilogy is a strangely pleasurable punch to the gut

It took me three tries to get into this series, and I honestly only persevered because I'm familiar with Matt's work.

Halfway through the first book it started clicking and drew me in.

Though it lacks the smoothness and liveliness of his later work, it still takes you through a range of emotions - mostly painful ones.

Overall a satisfying story of universes past when we were playthings for supernatural beings, with Matt's flair for creating complex vast worlds without wasting the reader's time with unnecessarily detailed "world building"/exposition.

As always, I feel richer for reading Matt's work

And sad at the range of trauma he must be drawing on to write these worlds.

[Andrew Bartlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to follow this book.

Maybe it's because I have no familiarity with demonology, and very little bible knowledge. I have had very little exposure to Christianity and maybe this explains my difficulty. There is also a huge roster of characters to keep track of, and I think the author realised this as each chapter starts with the names of the characters that chapter will follow.

I really like all of Matt Dinniman's other work, so I would strongly recommend readers to start at Dungeon Crawler Carl if they want to read his work, as it is excellent.

The other thing in this series that I didn't click with is that so many things are described as indescribable. There are so many things that are too vast to fathom, or too bright to see, or too many to count.

[Charles Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's The Second Coming; Maybe The Third.

The last book of the Christian Science Fantasy trilogy, "The Shivered Sky." The ending is predictable -- this trilogy, in effect, being an imaginative prequel to the book of Revelations from the Bible.

This book, and the series of which it is a part, may be of interest to fans of the wider Fantasy genre and, possibly, to some Christians who can tolerate their mythology being rewritten and expanded.

[Lev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this series after finishing all of the currently released books in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I found some of the ideas in these books be pretty interesting, but had a difficult time getting invested in the story. I think for me the switching back-and-forth between the perspectives of the characters so often made it difficult for me to feel like I knew them and want to learn more about their individual stories.

[Olabiyi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good finale

Nice short denouement to round off the previous two instalments. It’s more of an intriguing end than it is action. This provides an insight into an interpretation of angels and demons from another person’s perspective.