A Darkling Plain is a story of betrayal, friendship, love and understanding. With characters like the misunderstood Shrike, a stalker (terminator like robot friend/fiend?) with an unhealthy obsession with Hester. Hester herself, a scarred woman who hides her feelings with her erratic and often life threatening behaviour. Tom Natsworthy, a once frail boy who had been thrown into danger and adventure, now a father with a fatal heart problem, hiding this secret from his daughter Wren. And now we come to Wren, an adventurous girl who is tore away from her true love. There is a wealth of characters in A Darkling Plain, all with an abundance of different personalities, values, beliefs and agendas.

The story starts off around six months after the end of Infernal Devices. There are many stories taking place at once, often affecting each other but without even contacting each other. The characters have their own stories, sometimes they are thrown together and reunited but at other times they are split apart into separate chapters.

Philip Reeves is an amazing author. Just being able to interconnect all these stories is an amazing feat. I love how all the characters stories intertwine and intervene with events in the world of A Darkling Plain. The world itself is amazing. Filled with steam-punk type elements like traction cities and vehicles driven by sails yet also including references to today's world which is often funny in nature (“The Ancients had machines called ‘eye-pods’ where they could store thousands of songs on tiny little gramophone records.”) not a great example but I can't remember any more.

I know I've already mentioned a lot about the story but it truly is amazing. There are about five going on in the world and each is as interesting and intriguing as the next. There are many many plot twists with crazy outcomes that make you think wow. The ending is definitely worth mentioning because of its "lest possible outcome you could ever think of” type of sensation and it gives you a satisfied feeling inside but also a troubling one as you know no more books will be written for this series.