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I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

After eleven years David receives a call, the children he had with his girlfriend-on-the-side-for-seven-years are found and since their mother is dead, he takes custody. Bringing two new children to his 'actual' family is even the weirdest part. They have suffered from terrible abuse claim to be dark wizards, a tale David believes they've created to cope with the abuse. But then he learns the truth. Everyone around him - himself included - is a dark wizard.

Being a dark wizard doesn't necessarily make you bad, but destruction is your main trait. And for quite some time in this novel, shattered glass is about all the magic you will get. In the beginning I had some troubles to really get into the story because I kept waiting for something to happen. But this isn't a story with a murder to solve nor is there an epic quest of some sort. This is a novel about David and his family, trying to live with the new knowledge of being wizards, in a world where the use magic isn't always helping you, and things can backfire quite badly. I don't think this is a book for everyone, but once I got that, I didn't mind at all and really enjoyed the rest of the story.

It would have been nice to see some more world building, and to know some more rules of the use of magic. So far. limitations aren't really known, and the exact differences between the good, the bad (and the ugly :P) witches haven't really been explained properly. Which would be understandable given the fact they are all extremely rare and hard to find as they try to mix in with the Mundane (or the normal people), but everyone in this book is. Not only David and his wife and children, also his girlfriend-on-the-side-for-seven-years, his brother, parents, brother-in-law and his wife, and almost all other characters are wizards. And all this in the extremely magical setting of: Texas.

So, if you don't mind a slow story where magic isn't always helping the main characters, try this book. It's the first in the new December-people series (Months are given to each wizard to decide just how dark they are, December is pretty bad though) and I'm planning on reading the sequel as well. ( )

This book took me by surprise - I really didn't think I'd love it as much as I did.

The first chapter read a little awkwardly; I think the writer was finding their footing. It thankfully took off from there - fast. David had an affair and now it's come to haunt him - as he has to take custody of the two kids from that relationship. The children were kept in hiding by the mother and her abusive boyfriend, and they practiced a dark sort of magic.

The story doesn't stop with the surprises. Every few chapters I would sit there stunned, learning something new that changed the game. Changes about the children, or the main characters like David himself. The world building was creative and not like anything else I've read before. A mix between dark and light magic. It's not really in your face types, though, more of a subtle magic. Fascinating stuff.

The wife took awhile to grow on me, but I ended up liking her more later. Each kid had their own personality and current story, which became fascinating.

I can't wait for the second book to see what happens. I'm especially curious about David and the friend's parents. It didn't end on a cliffhanger per se, but definitely makes me want to keep reading.

It's not strictly a young adult, it's as suitable for the adult genre. A fantasy type story. Highly recommended if you enjoy stories with magic as part of the world building. ( )

My original Destruction audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

David Vandergraff tries to be a good man. He lives with his wife and their three children, having the usual family drama, until one night when David receives a call to inform him that the children he had with another woman have finally reappeared. He goes to get them and finds that they seem to think they are wizards, surely a way to cope with all what happened to them: an abusive step-father who ended up killing their mother in front of their eyes. But things start to get out of hand when David's wife confesses that she is a witch and that David is in fact a wizard, making their three children wizards too.

This is one of those rare gems that fantasy for adults books are, not a young adult finding out the magical side of things, but a middle age man with a family and very mundane problems at work, finding out that he is been a wizard all along. And not any kind of wizard, but a dark one. Wizards are classified according to the four seasons, and this translates into what kind of magic they can do. It is not a distinction between good and bad wizards, just how their magic works. Dark wizard's magic works through destruction, hence the title of the book.

There are wizards who willingly decide to avoid practicing magic because it is very dangerous, trying to live a mundane life. I partly understand this, but my analytical mind cannot conceive why you would just give your back to something dangerous without further questioning. David's wife attitude to bury deep their magical past and convert to Catholicism seemed a bit childish and sheepily. I think we need to have a critical attitude in life and know your enemies and dangers so that you can decide the best course of action. I was also bothered by how much lies and deception there were in this book, but this is just a personal preference, and somehow it prevented me to fully connect to the characters.

Very serious matters are discussed in this book but as I could not connect with the characters, I found it impossible to suffer for them. It was like everybody was numb. I also had problems to understand some of their actions and the motivations behind.

The story is slowly paced and despite the seriousness of the situation, if feels a light read. I just hoped the tension would climb up more towards the end, which felt quite anticlimactic.

This is not an easy book to be listened to just for the fact that there were many characters with evolving relationships. It would have helped if Dennis Holland's voice register could have been a bit more ample. He used two different tones of voice: a neutral one, used for male adults and the narrator, and a softer one, for female adults and children. And the main characters here are a couple and five children! It did not help that from time to time the softer tone was also used for the narration, making things a bit confusing. The audio production was correct though, without glitches.

Another thing that I would like to comment is that dark wizards are the ones born around the winter solstice, and the book mentions December (the series is called The December People), so I assume this just includes the wizards in the Northern Hemisphere. What about South America or Australia? Maybe I am just too picky, but I wonder how somebody from those areas would feel when reading this book.

I think this book would delight those who wish a light read and want something different than the typical young adult fantasy book.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author. ( )

This book was the august2014 book in my online book club. I usually don't write reviews because I hate writing reviews and I'm not very good at it, but I promised and I hate breaking promises even more.

I have mixed feelings about this book: I really liked reading it, but it had quite a few major flaws. It is a fast and comfortable read, but the characters act very strangely and unlikely now and then, and I missed the emotions. The characters are _said_ to have emotions, but I don't _feel_ them at all. Which is a pity, because I liked the setting of the book very much.

I hope the author has a steep learning curve, as I intend to read the next book. :-) ( )

Although this is clearly fantasy, it's very different from just about all other fantasy I've read. It has magic, yes, but although it plays a major role, it's like the book doesn't revolve around it. The book is not about magic, it's about a dysfunctional family going through troubled times, that happen to involve magic. This family has magical things going wrong like other families have teen pregnancies and drug abuse.
And there's plenty going wrong. The father of the family, David, had an affair resulting in two children 12 years ago. The 'other woman' disappeared with his children and he was never able to find them. Then he gets a phone call: his children have been found, and their mother and stepfather are dead. David takes them in. That's the start of the dysfunctional. As for the troubles: the family's company goes bankrupt, the two newest children have been abused, the eldest son drunkenly drives the car into the house and later rapes a friend of his sister, the parents of said friend are addicts and have gone missing, and on top of that, everyone turns out to be witches, and magic always backfires.
A lot of the misery might have been caused by magic backfiring, but some of the characters disagree and say that dark witches always blame their magic for the things going wrong. In the narrative of the book, I don't think this is completely true, but on the other hand it seems to be a convenient way for giving up on leading a decent life. The 'practising magic is bad' thing is not something I believe: I'm more inclined to go with one of the characters who said that destructive magic can also be good. Some things need destroying after all. I hope that part will come through more clearly in possible follow-up books.

In general, this was very easy to read (despite all the misery). Most of the characters were sympathetic, even though some behaved very strangely at times (seriously, someone can be a coward, but to not tell your wife you're bringing home your two extra-marital children she doesn't know about? That's plain stupid. To then not tell her your company has gone bankrupt, or that your son has accidentally killed his mother?That's approaching ridiculous. Then perhaps the most heinous crime in the book belongs to Amanda: she knowingly steals David's painful childhood memories without his consent. That is such a disgusting violation that I cannot understand more is not made of it. Sure, David is angry, but is that really all? She could have asked him what he wanted. Instead she violates him and causes a lot of things to go wrong in the process. Despite admitting what she did is wrong, she still refuses to tell David about the memories. And overall, with all the drama going on, it seems to be almost forgotten. David gets more angry about his son raping a girl then this, and personally, I think this is much worse, especially considering that there seems to be something really wrong with the son. I really feel this is almost glossed over.

What bothered me about the writing sometimes was that a chapter would move to a climax, and then the next chapter has abruptly fast-forwarded too much, so that it seems as if you've missed something. About the story, I liked the ideas, and the ways they are told, but I really do think too many things were going wrong. It just kept adding up, to a point where it was not realistic any more, even considering all the magic.
I did like that the atmosphere of this book was very different from most fantasy books, and that magic, instead of being the answer to everything mostly is just a pain in the backside. The book does not have a traditional adventure story line, where it is clear where everything must go: instead, things happen sort of disjointedly, in a way (aside from the quantity of misery) things might happen in real life. As a result, it might not be for everyone, but I liked it quite a bit. ( )