The Darkest Bloom

The Darkest Bloom by P.M. Freestone is a high fantasy action adventure with intrigue and riddles, wrapped up with a magic systems structured around themes of scent and perfumes.

The Darkest Bloom was an entertaining read, but ultimately nothing particularly special. The characters, plotting, and progression worked well. The prose was solid and the world building fairly good and well executed with the main aesthetic theme of scent and perfumes both prevalent, varied and immersive.
The main characters are solid and reasonably well executed but come across as somewhat standard: Ash is stern, brooding, honorable, and tormented by a dark secret, and Rakel is tough and spunky. They’re good archetypes, and decently executed, but the characters fail to tangibly rise above those archetypes and thus to really add much to the book in of themselves.
The plot itself is simple but effective, using a variety of challenges and fantastical locations to elevate what is essentially a series of fetch quests tied together with a riddle into something entertaining and varied. The core emotional drive behind the plot, I.E what our characters want/fear to lose, is strong and allowed for me to easily invest in the narrative.
I did have some criticisms for the book, but they’re small, and not particularly worth mentioning. As a whole, the Darkest Bloom is a solid high fantasy story.