Broken Sky by Chris Wooding

The Broken Sky series was originally published as 9 books, but in 2007-08 republished into the author's originally intended trilogy. I've read the 3 translated books.

Broken Sky is the story of two mirrored worlds, the Dominions and Kirin Taq. It’s about a pair of twins who find themselves torn from the safety of their home and thrown into the conflict, and how they become key players in the battle for both dimensions against the despotic King Macaan and his daughter.
(from the author's page about the series)

The 3 books:

• Twilight War (Broken Sky: Act 1)
• Communion (Broken Sky: Act 2)
• The Citadel (Broken Sky: Act 3)

I'll start out by saying that I can't review the language/writing in the books. The Danish translations are absolutely horrendous, to the point where you sometimes wonder if they ran sentences through Google Translate. HOWEVER - the story is pretty intricate, awesome, action-filled and dramatic and I quite enjoyed it. Some of the characters are a bit too basic, but the plot really isn't. The tone is sometimes a bit silly, even childish, but some of the events are downright brutal - there is no mercy.

Do not be fooled by the covers (illustrated here are the Danish ones). All of them, original language and translated ones, just scream... something negative, I have nothing against the style at all, it's just not a good version of it. Though definitely incredible inspired and influenced by the Japanese cartoon style Manga and Anime, it's proper novels with "proper" writing (as in, not in the least, a cartoon). Having seen Animes though, is a help, because it's so easy to imagine the monsters and creatures in the books when you know what style they derive from. I would actually quite love to see them as an animated TV series.

Ironically – since it was born from the desire to write an animated series – Broken Sky went into development as an animated series. They’d even got to the stage of making trailers – which looked fantastic – but sadly the project has since died. Oh well…
(from the author's page about the series) 


The 3 books are very similar and all got 3 stars each. They are so inseparable that I read them back to back - obviously you don't have to do that, but I think I would have had trouble remembering who's who and why and what if I hadn't done it like that.

986 pages (3 books) / originally published in 1999-2001 Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2012