The Dark Gods is an ongoing Dark Fantasy series and adult debut by Tara Sim.
The series currently consists of two books, The City Of Dusk and The Midnight Kingdom, and one upcoming release, The Dawn Throne.
The Four Realms—Life, Death, Light, and Darkness—all converge on the city of dusk. For each realm there is a god, and for each god there is an heir.
But the gods have withdrawn their favor from the once vibrant and thriving city. And without it, all the realms are dying.
Unwilling to stand by and watch the destruction, the four heirs—Risha, a necromancer struggling to keep the peace; Angelica, an elementalist with her eyes set on the throne; Taesia, a shadow-wielding rogue with rebellion in her heart; and Nik, a soldier who struggles to see the light— will sacrifice everything to save the city.
But their defiance will cost them dearly.
Set in a gorgeous world of bone and shadow magic, of vengeful gods and defiant chosen ones, The City of Dusk is the first in a dark epic fantasy trilogy that follows the four heirs of four noble houses—each gifted with a divine power—as they form a tenuous alliance to keep their kingdom from descending into a realm-shattering war.
The Dark Gods contains examples of the following tropes:
- Divine Conflict: The four gods came into conflict after killing their older sibling and fighting over his body and power. This conflict has led them to ignore the degradation of their own realms in favor of attempts to gain control of their older sibling's power.
- Divine Parentage: All of the four houses, to which most of the characters belong, are all descendants of a demigod made by one of the four gods.
- God-Eating: The four gods killed and devoured pieces their older sibling in bid for power.
- However, this seems to have had negative side-effects. Throughout the second book, Vos, the God of Light, is revealed to be constantly driven by an overwhelming hunger, implied to have begun when he consumed bits of his older sibling. This even drives him to consume one of the eyes of his descendant, Nik, in an effort to appease the hunger.
