Miserere

Miserere: An Autumn Tale is an excellent debut novel and a great character-driven, dark fantasy book. It has strong world-building and well-developed main characters, both of which are handled in a way that sets it apart as different from a lot of fantasy. The strength of this book has certainly put Teresa Frohock on my radar as an author to watch.

A battle between heaven and hell is a very familiar basic plotline, but one of the things I really appreciated about this novel was that it was not the usual take on this sort of story. Other than one very short part, it is not set on earth, but a completely different place with its own set of rules. Woerld is a very complex place where all religions work together to keep the Fallen in hell where they belong.

Another aspect of the book I appreciated was that the main character, Lucian, was a 40-year-old man who actually acted his age. Likewise, the woman he betrayed in the past, Rachael, is also a mature woman worthy of respect for her strength of character and fairness. These two characters really made the book for me, and I'm excited to read the next book when it is available.

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