A world that is full of magic and religion is the essence of The Shock of Night**.  Willet Dura is King Laidir's reeve (personal detective) and has only recently been given the title Lord (really only a name as he has no respect among the other Lords.   As reeve, Dura finds himself next to Elwin as he dies, the result of a gruesome murder. Elwin passes on the rarest gift of Aer to Dura with his last breath and that is when Lord Dura's life changes forever.

Suddenly Dura can see a person's deepest thoughts and secrets - but the ability comes with a severe price.

While Dura is trying to figure out what has happened to him, he learns of a battle that is upon Bunard, and is full are darkness and evil.  Darkness that seems to be from the Darkwater forest.

The book follows Dura and the religious leaders who also have this rare gift as Dura tries to find who murdered Elwin.  

Patrick Carr has a great way of weaving a story.  I was very interested right away, but I couldn't pinpoint why!  Dura is an extremely complex character - he survived a major war, in fact he is one of a hand full to survive a horrible attack that pushed him and his men in to the mysterious Darkwater - and as a result it was easy for me to see many of his personal issues as PTSD, yet there was still more.

I also enjoyed the scenes in the King's court - both his private conversations with Dura and the moments in his court.  There are not many books around with such a king and court - very interesting, especially if you read this with the idea of the Biblical accounts of kings and royal courts.

Mostly the pace of this book was a disappointment.  I had a ton of questions in the beginning - perfect for a mystery and fantasy - yet even after 250 pages not many of those questions were answers.  The ones that were had been replaced with new questions.  Yes some of them got answered, but others I guessed at, but still... maybe in the sequel?

While fantasy and magic does not bother me in fiction - this book was presented to me as a Christian fiction, and there is a ton of magic in this story and very little Christian in it.  Sure there are a ton of religious points, and religion in the book, but religion is not the same as Christian. 

This book is sure to grab your attention and demand your attention and thought.  Carr is a fabulous story teller.  All fantasy and mystery fans can find this book to be entertaining at least

I am torn over how to rate this story - the writing was impeccable, yet I was expecting something completely different, and I was left with just as many questions as I had at chapter 2.  But I'm going to give it four stars, as it is the first novel in the series... yet I am not sure I will read the rest of the series. 

I would suggest this book to fantasy or mystery fans. Also any one who enjoys a book that is full of deep and complex characters, you might want to pick this one up.  There is no reason teens should avoid this book, as long as they enjoy long stories.