Title: Darkmouth
Author: Shane Hegarty
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 416
Rating: 10/10
Shane Hegarty – Darkmouth
Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.
I haven’t read a series debut that was this good in a long time, and that’s the truth – I might have received this book for free, but I’ll be buying the next one myself, when it comes out. Hegarty’s Darkmouth is a small Irish town that’s the last place in the world that’s still under attack from monsters – Legends, to give them their full title.
The Legends are able to attack the streets of Darkmouth by creating portals between their world, which is an arid, acrid wasteland, and our own. All that stands between them is twelve-year-old Finn, the last Legend Hunter. Finn’s being trained by his father who’s hoping to pass on the skill, but he’s not a natural – he tries hard, but he does more harm than good, and he secretly hopes to become a vet when he grows up.
This, then, is a coming of age story, and it’s a beauty – a super exciting new series that has serious potential. It might not dethrone Harry Potter, but it could easily overtake the Skulduggery Pleasant series and pose a serious threat to the likes of Artemis Fowl, the author of which described this book as “incredible, the next big thing.”
Shane Hegarty
The village of Darkmouth is also a lot easier to visualise thanks to the epic illustrations that are dotted throughout the book, as well as online in the form of animated YouTube videos (unless I dreamt that). Harper Collins has done a great job here, it just exudes quality everywhere it exists – there must’ve been a pretty big team working on this one, ’cause it looks to me as though they’ve covered every angle.
Even the cover is epic, and I’m not just talking about the artwork – the spine is ridged, and feels like snakeskin if you run your fingers over it. It’s the little touches like that which make this book stand apart from most of the other young adult books on the market, and both the publisher and the author should be proud of this.
Fingers crossed that the rest of the series follows suit, because this is one hell of a promising start. The potential for the story to be developed seems almost limitless, and I can’t wait to find out what Finn gets up to next.
Darkmouth
