Serena’s Review: “The Dark Fable”

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Book: “The Dark Fable” by Katherine Harbour

Publishing Info: Bloomsbury YA, January 2024

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Magical heists. Deadly secrets. Come along for the ride . . . if you dare. This heart-stopping, seductive fantasy is perfect for fans of Six of Crows .

Evie Wilder is an orphan who has gone through most of her life unnoticed . . . until she’s caught up in a dramatic heist and captures the attention of the Dark Fable. They have chosen her for a she can turn invisible. This skill would make Evie a treasured asset to the legendary group of thieves known for spiriting away obscure and occult artifacts.

Evie cannot resist their allure and is eager to join this newfound family. But she discovers there are more skeletons in the Dark Fable’s past than she could have ever imagined. And these secrets might be the answer to her own tragic past.

No one is who they seem to be and the price of uncovering the Dark Fable’s cryptic history just might be fatal . . .

Review: I honestly am starting to wonder if there has ever been another book as popular to name drop when attempting to hype an upcoming YA fantasy novel as “Six of Crows.” I mean, that book has been out for years and years now. There have been many other popular YA books since then, as well. And while there are other contenders (“Uprooted” sure had a run there for a while), I don’t think there’s any underestimating just how many books have been heralded as the next “Six of Crows.” But if producing another “Six of Crows” was as easy as it is to name-drop it, well, we’d have about a million excellent heist books on our hands! As it stands, it is not that easy, and instead we have an almost overwhelming number of found family/thief books that are mostly…ok. And this one, while definitely not the worst I’ve seen, is yet another continuance in a years-long trend.

One thing this book definitely did not lack was creativity and ideas. The author not only creates a huge cast of characters, but she equips them all with a plethora of magical abilities and detailed (often traumatic) histories. She also didn’t hold back in her descriptions of said characters; perhaps diving into exactly what they were wearing a few too many times for my taste. I felt like I had a very good, very superficial understanding of who everyone is, but not much more than that. While I was impressed by the large scope, the actual character development felt lacking. For a book with many characters, you’d think a larger focus would have been placed on creating more in-depth relationships between them. But, instead, I felt like I was quickly given the parameters within which they all engaged with one another, and not much more was established beyond this initial insight. And, again, because the cast of characters is so large, a decent chunk of the beginning of the novel must be devoted to Evie meeting each and every one of these characters, which puts an immediate stumbling block in front of the pacing right from the get go.

I also felt like the plot was a bit muddled at times. Again, there is no lack of ideas and the action kept on coming throughout much of it. But, in a weird way, there’s this thing when reading where too much going on can result in just as much boredom and disconnect as too little. And here, we definitely had the former. While seemingly important and exciting events were constantly unfolding, I felt myself loosing interest and drifting away from the primary story itself.

Towards the end of the book, there were a decent numbers of twists and turns that were able to draw me back into the story. So if you’re invested enough early on, I do think the book can offer up a decent payoff for those who stick it through. I also think the writing itself was approachable and fairly strong, and if I had gotten a bit more in actual character development and perhaps a bit less of some of the superficial descriptions, this book might have worked better for me. As it is, this was a bit of a middling book for me. If you’re a die-hard found-family/fantasy heists reader, than this one might be worth checking out. But if you’re already on the fence about yet another “Six of Crows” read-alike, then I don’t think this one is really going to blow your mind.

Rating 7: Approachable and even at times fun, but too little actual character development really sank this one for me.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Dark Fable” can be found on this Goodreads list: YA Releases January 2024.