The Bookwyrm's Review of Dig My Grave by C.J. Amato
Rating: 9.25/10 Stars
After The Great Divide left them isolated my monstrous water mountains.
After The Maker's Massacre left them in darkness-leaving them in a world divided between Blue and Black.
Buried deep down in their home-holes, the families of The Five have been waiting for a long time for the catalyst that will spark The Maker's Third Atrocity.
Time can yield countless possibilities.
Time finds a young Gracie No-Name sold to the Broken King Magnus Windbound. Her simple crime was being born to an unloving mother.
A generation earlier, time finds Summer. A girl with curly blue hair and gray-blue eyes born to a world of black hair and black eyes, named after the season of her abandonment.
Another generation later, Skye Wallace predictably found himself in his office lost in time-investigating God's Cruelties. But Skye often finds himself reading about The Daughters of Light. Astonishing women, able to yield nature to their will, with just the snap of a finger.
Then stands the Gravedigger. A specter shrouded in black, burying this world one soul at a time, with every dig of its diamond shovel.
I'm always glad to see an author try writing outside the usual fantasy box. Unusual settings, different magic systems, creative fantasy creatures, magical time travel, I love it all. In Dig My Grave, the first book in C.J. Ament's Hymns From The Lighthouse series, all those elements and more are present, written is such a fascinating style that I think re-readings will show more layers to the story.
The worldbuilding is definitely outside the box. A world that has been through not just one godly cataclysm, but two, is not the usual setup. Especially since they had such different detrimental effects to the people and creatures living on the Five, as the nations are called. They have some very different rulers, laws regarding Tempests, the women who can use elemental magic, and different populations and customs. All under a creator god who at the very least has lost patience with the foibles of mankind, and has created a situation that has caused humanity to move underground during the dark season if they want to live.
The characters of this world really shine. In a world where being different is more a curse than blessing, they somehow manage to make their mark on the world. A world where abandoned children are common after the cataclysms, named after the season they were abandoned in. Summer and Summer, foster brother and sister, are living in a church orphanage, where sister Summer is prone to escaping to use her water magic, just so she can feel as though she's free. Brother Summer loves her enough to cover for her, often paying a painful price, until one day a terrible accidental action of sister Summer brings their world crashing down, and brother Summer has to make a world shaking sacrifice in response to save her.
Gracie No Name is a Fire Tempest sold to the King of Verge, and during a moment of melancholy, the King reveals he too has magic, his of the mind, and transports Gracie back to various times in his life, in her case physically, where she interacts with younger versions of the king and his retainers, even before he became king, and the interactions she has have real world consequences, since time has no inertia factor in this world. We get to see how her life turns out, in some surprising ways.
Skye Wallace lives in the current age, researching what brought about the world they live in. It's his past run-ins with magic and his current investigations that will shape the world going forward, because his past holds clues to why the world is in in such an apocalyptic state. His interactions with The Gravedigger, who is tied to the creator somehow, will reveal much about the past and steer the course for the future.
After I finished the book, I realized just how layered this story is, and the twists and turns it's non-sequential storytelling takes, along with cross time interactions, really immerses the reader in this world. It's a slow reveal, with new facets revealed with every scene, and every interaction having possibly world changing consequences. In a brutal world, we see just how far people are willing to go to survive. I think this book will have a lot of appeal for fantasy fans looking for a story with multiple layers, where the slow reveal of the world and character's motivations keep you turning the pages waiting to see what comes next. I highly recommend checking it out, and I know I will be continuing the series as it progresses.
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