After the brilliant trilogy that was the Way of Edan, Philip Chase follows up with a stand-alone detailing the events 16 years after. The peace brought by the Prophets action has been widely successful, the wounds between the nations are healing and all would be well, if not for an ancient dragon laying waste to the lands and especially to the northern nation of Grimrik where King Orvandil rules, who also has to face his daughter’s abduction by one of the remnant tribes of his old Illarchan foes. Knowing that he is in over his head he sends his dweorgen friend Gnorn and his two other children, Yrsa and Volund, to the kingdom of Asdralad, to find help with the Sorceress-Queen Sequara. Sequara has her own problems though, mentoring young Riall, a promising but stubborn young woman whose powers surpass those of every other living gifted person. It’s hard to tell more without spoiling anything, and most readers that have read the Way of Edan will grasp immediately what’s behind some of the mystery at the start of that novel. So those are certainly more for newcomers to the story who have no previous knowledge about the world. Still, even for those who have, the author holds one or two surprises in store, and at least to this reader, while the return to Torrlund kinda felt like coming home into a beloved and well-known world, it’s those new things and people that make the book as appealing as it is. Being a standalone, the scope of this book is obviously way smaller than that of the trilogy, and the author withstood the temptation to blow everything up he had established before, so even while there are high stakes in the story, it still feels calmer, and a bit more meditative than Edan had. There’s a lot of reflection on what the Prophet brought to Eormenland and in this feels like the requiem we didn’t get within the original trilogy. It also deals with the consequences of the events in Edan, both in the action and in the personal lifes of the people left behind. and as much as it is a story about dealing with the phyical threats of both the dragon and the Illarchae, it is also a hugely personal journey for our new protagonists. I am hesitating to call it a YA novel, but the way Philip Chase puts three young people together who all are still finding their role and place in this world has certainly elements of this, and while the author still doesn’t shy away from describing violent events in all their cruelness, the book is a bit more lighthearted and thereby feels a bit like the Hobbit felt to the Lord of the rings. Pretty much every teenager will be able to relate to young Khel feeling like he doesn’t belong anywhere, and everyone who has the luck to have a good friend like Volund is to Khel will appreciate the relation between those two even more. So once again, friendship is one of the main themes in the story, both between the old and the new cast. The other thing that appealed to me was how the villains of the story aren’t quite as villaneous as those of the Edan trilogy. Both dragon and Illarchae have reasons for their actions you can empathize with, and I loved how the author developed the relationship between Orvandil’s abducted daughter Sigra and Illarchan tribe chief Bolverk. Philip Chase still hints at the human tendency to put zealotry and personal ambition over ratio and decency, and if there’s one thing I didn’t like about the whole book is how one-sided he describes Yrsa as a brainless, hateful butcher (really, even Bolverk’s son Unnar who is pretty much the only totally evil person in the book has more character shown); I’m not even sure if that is intentional because in the end she is more of a story tool than an actual person in that book, but that’s how she comes across because of that. And while she isn’t the focus of the story, a little bit more space and character could have easily prevented that in a book that tries to show the human side of basically everyone else. So, with that slight caveat at the end, While Darkness Gathers is a really good sequel to the Way of Edan trilogy. It’s wonderful to meet old and new friends on the way, and Philip Chase has that beautiful writing style harking back to some of the more classic fantasy authors out there without just rehashing what those have done before him. There’s this underlying melancholy as well as the love for art to his writing that you’ll also find with Guy Gavriel Kay. Grimdark certainly has its place in modern fantasy, but I feel like I crave for that spark of hope in those stories; that is what drew me to Tolkien a long time ago, and I’m glad that there are still writers out there who offer that experience to me.