Evenfall

You like pain? Good, let Santino and Ais punch you in the feels for free.★★★★★ 5 beautifully tragic stars for this story about two broken men that try to fit their their jutting edges together without slicing each other apart in the process

In the Company of Shadows by Santino Hassel and Ais is one of the few books that had such an impact on my emotions that I was a useless shell of a person for some days after reading the first two books.

That was partly because I was so heavily invested in the characters and partly because it had pretty heavy topics. But mostly because of the combination of those two. Emotionally agonizing and awful scenes my boys, Sin and Boyd, were invovled with that made my skin crawl.

Now, that doesn't sound like a great read you might say. And truly it isn't a great read in the way most of the books I really like are, were I lay it down in satisfaction after the last sentence, basking in the afterglow of a story well told.

No, ICoS leaves you sitting in your chair, emotionally bruised and battered, not feeling able to interact with another human being for the foreseeable future because you're too exhausted. It made me feel physically and emotionally ill at times. But I read them in less than a week and lemme just tell you that Evenfall has 1400 pages and Afterimage 1000 (at least the uncut versions). It is not published or professionally edited, there are parts that could be shortened or tidied up but it has been a long time since even a published book had such an impact on me.


Evenfall and Afterimage give you the illusion that everything will be alright and that Sin and Boyd might be happy just to rip your heart out in the next few chapters and crush it brutally, and then let you sink into despair with the certainity that nothing will be okay ever again before giving you a nice warm blanket of some comfort, and then abandoning you in the cold where you'll be for the rest of the book with a hint of hope on the very last page.

Requirements for reading this book:

- a person that will hug you and tell you that everything is eventually going to be okay and that the pain you feel will go away

- a blanket and a warm cup of tea

- some stuffed animal you're not fond of so you can vent some of the anger and frustration you'll feel

It helps if you already experienced series finales and are accustomed to having your emotions tormented by the hands of writers.


That still doesn't sound like a book I want to read you are probably saying and parts of it probably aren't something you want to read unless you enjoy emotional and physical abuse. But for all the bad scenes this book made me go through it made the good times stand out and seem so much more brighter and wonderful even if they probably aren't all that bright and happy compared to my usual reads. Also some very hot scenes add satisfied expression thinking about those scenes here


I'm probably not doing a good job at convincing you to read it and I'm not really trying to because I don't handle emotional stress, angst and anxiety well and for that reason I can't in good conscience tell everyone to go read it. I was not exaggerating at the start when I said it left me a useless shell of a person for days.

Or let me put it like this ICoS is on of my favourite series and I haven't read the last installment for the past few years because I'm too scared of what it might have in store. That basically sums it up.