“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

Life isn’t just a collection of everything bright and clear and colorful.  There exists within all of us the deep truths of existence.  These truths drive us to excel, to create beautiful distractions, to shout into the empty void of the cosmos that we exist and that we matter.  In the end, the shadow cast by the flame of our lives is immutable;

One day those we love must die.

One day we must die.

There are those among us, however, who have stared into the black abyss within and refused to despair.  They reshape themselves, turning themselves into a black-flamed candle whose light illuminates the darkness.

Such rare souls show us what we overlook in our zeal to avoid the truth; there is beauty hidden within the dark places of our souls.

Luke Tarzian is one of those rare individuals.

Vultures is the first book in the Shadow Twins series and the first professional release of Luke Tarzian’s career.

Make no mistake; It. Is. Awesome.

Profound, elegantly paced, set in a world fully-realized and just as wonderfully flawed as our own, Vultures sets the scene and tone from the first page and refuses to relent.

It is refreshing to see a book try to grapple with one of the most stark questions of fantasy; what happens after the prophecy is fulfilled and the ultimate evil is destroyed.

As it is with our own lives, just because we’ve won the battle doesn’t mean we always win the war.

I have to be brutally honest with you: This read took me quite some time.  I frequently had to turn off the screen and seek out the furry ball of claws who runs our household for comfort.  In a deeply ironic and fitting metaphor for the source material, such comfort often involved scratch marks.

If you’re willing to give yourself a chance to breathe, if you’re willing to lose yourself to a world eager to swallow you whole and turn you into something new, then Vultures is the book for you.

Luke Tarzian’s work is a modern-age revival of the stylings of Edgar Allan Poe.

Gaze upon the dark majesty of his work and marvel at the beauty shrouded in blackness.