Our Share of Night

 Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, 736 pages.

The Order has been worshiping The Darkness for centuries, making terrible offerings of torture and murder to further their own power and fortunes. Juan Peterson is their most recent unwilling prophet, called a medium, who serves as an avatar for the power during their terrible rituals. But Juan has a son, and while The Order is determined that Gaspar will be his heir, Juan is even more determined that his son will have nothing to do with the ghosts and dark rituals. 

It is hard to summarize the plot of this book because it is sprawling and non-continuous. The book is divided into five parts, most with a different protagonist or protagonists. Four of the five take place in Argentina, and one in England, and the sections move back and forth in time. I found this division to be one of the weaker parts of the book. I found this novel shockingly lacking in momentum, which is a major problem for a book this large. Part of the problem was the leisurely pace of the plot, where very often nothing in particular is happening, and part of the problem is that every time the story starts to build any momentum it is often interrupted for something totally unrelated. It probably also doesn't help that, with the way the book is ordered, generally the audience knows much more about everything than any of the characters, so there are very few mysteries to resolve. I personally found that Enriquez's very good prose and the interesting elements of horror placed during the military dictatorship in Argentina unfortunately weren't enough to make up for the weak plot and characters. It feels like this book might be really good for someone, but I can't quite figure out enough of what it's goals were to figure out if it met any of them.