A Darker Magic This Way Comes is the first tale in Merlin’s Secrets, a series of five books. It is an epic and fast-paced story of love and war, knights and wizardry, angels and goddesses and the cosmic clash between Darkness and Light. It re-imagines the Arthurian legend, as narrated by Merlin. But who is this Merlin?
Set in the turbulent and brutal times of the fifth and sixth century, Merlin also writes of his love for a fairy from the Otherworld, Emily Charlotte Hughes, a high school student from twenty first century Exeter in Devon. Throughout the hundred years of the Merlin’s Secrets series, Emily and Merlin swap the narrator role to give the reader both contemporary and historical insights into the characters and the story. But the young lovers will be separated by their complex destinies and will only have a short amount of time together. The characters are engaging; Emily lives the life of a modern intelligent sixteen year old, yet she falls in love with someone who has a squillion hits on Google, and whom she knows has been dead for fifteen hundred years. Merlin, like an ancient prophet, meditates in caves where he has been known to talk with archangels. He has the ability to become entangled with evil and not be tarnished by it.
In A Darker Magic This Way Comes, the young lovers engage with Moloch, the Prince of Lies, and Morgana, a sorceress of immense power, when Emily, whom they call the Chosen One, is abducted. She has to find the answer to why she is chosen in this exhilarating mix of adventure, myth, and magic where nothing is as it first seems. Carmel Niland’s remarkable retelling of the perennially popular Arthurian legend will entrance her readers; history buffs will appreciate the archaeologically and historically accurate backdrop, while fantasy fans will love the twists and turns of her storyline.
