The Umbral Storm by Alec Hutson book review

From page one, The Umbral Storm immersed me in its world, a world full of fantastical imagery and strong creative depth. The scenes of the first couple chapters are alive in the cracking of bark, and chill, blanketing mist in a forest of mountainous trees. The world build is tangible and tactile, allowing the readers to feel and hear the strange and unique elements the author populates it with; and while subsequent chapters never quite reach that spectacular height of immersion and tangibility, they are never the less excellent and visually replete.
The characters are strong, with growth and complex inter-dynamics that are often messy but (and this is important for me) never fall into the trap of being melodramatic or unpleasant. And, the characters are likable, and given screen time and moments to display and acquit themselves well: they make important decisions constantly, and suffer consequences for these decisions.
The prose is strong, delivering the weight and power of its actions and decisions, or the grandeur, or visceral horror or alienness of what it is describing. The actions scenes are dynamic, well paced, and make good use of the world’s magic system, which is both fun and well stylized.
The pacing of the book is near perfect, balancing character moments, lighter action scenes, heavy drama scenes, and bits of comedy so that there’s always something interesting transpiring or to anticipate but without ever fatiguing the reader. The conflicts the characters confront are well varied, requiring many different solutions without simply relying on straight forward combat.
There are some nice twists in the narrative, and a fair of amount of subtle intrigue that left me interested in the sequel.