Prepare For Me A Shallow Grave by Ainy Cormac
Blurb:
A man’s ego is the prophet of his downfall…
Cursed by an ancient goddess to be the desire of every eye, Gahlahan of Ohlin has trudged through centuries of blood and ruin. Legends of his name echo still, but it is a dying tone, indeed. His past is littered with a myriad of ghosts and poor decisions. Eternal yet unseen, he has watched empires rise and crumble, searching for a path away from her.
For a time, he believed he was forgotten...
But the hand that bound him still stalks his every step. Each breath she grants leaves him emptier than the last. In a world of cruel desires, fickle gods and brewing war, Gahlahan must carve a final path with blade in hand and a shallow grave awaiting.
She knows his heart. She owns his flesh.
What price can a man pay when even his soul is not his own?
The first novel in The Curse of Ohlin trilogy, Prepare For Me A Shallow Grave takes a dark look at the naivety of youth and the hollow burden of beauty. A novel that takes inspiration from grimdark epics and children's' fairy tales, Prepare For Me A Shallow Grave is a bleak, lyrical and unflinching dark fantasy novel that explores what it means to be the ideal of another. Flowing with banter, violence and grit, this novel is a dark fantasy gut-punch.
Review:
This review is long overdue, especially because this book rounded out my top 5 reads of 2025, and I’m hoping it can be as big of a hit for you.
First of all, I am, admittedly, a snob for good names. A bad name, be it for a character, a town, a country, whatever, will make or break a book for me. I’ve found that Grimdark books usually never miss the mark in terms of names knocking it out of the park, and Prepare For Me A Shallow Grave was no different. Now, you’re probably wondering why on Earth I’m talking about names, of all things. Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just write the reviews. And the review needs to say that the names in this book absolutely RIP.
Speaking of, we follow Gahlahan (finally, I’m getting to the actual review, right?) a man with a terrible curse. Namely, one that makes him appear as attractive as possible unto whoever does look upon him. At the beginning this leads to a tryst with a certain very important woman in the court in which he stays, but as the story progresses, we learn how it truly haunts him instead. At the beginning, the reader is almost forced into asking the question “how could that be so bad? Is that even a curse?” but Ainy does an expert job at making us realize just how awful it is.
Gahlahan himself goes on a quest of sorts to appease various factions and also to overthrow a hive of monstrous, insect like creatures all while managing the whims of those who harry his mind with his curse. An unexpected star was Mern, a young man of the cloth thrust into this journey with Gahlahan, who himself grows in as many ways as Gahlahan, despite the story being told in a single POV.
The atmosphere was possibly my favorite part of this book. Every bit dark, gritty, and filled with every last thing grimdark promises you, Ainy finds a way to make it both familiar and unique. The world itself, Sahul, grows beautiful across the pages (beautiful in a sick and twisted kind of way), and I cannot wait to keep exploring it. Not to be missed is Ainy’s prose, hidden beneath layers of blood, ichor, and viscera, it pulls us along on this grotesque journey through bloodshed and the demons of Gahlahan’s mind.
This book felt an ode to the grimdark genre, done masterfully, and I find it a crying shame this book isn’t talked about more. If you enjoy your stories with fucked up MCs in fucked up worlds, who you can’t tell if you want to root for or not, namely stories liked Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook or Whispers of the Storm by ZB Steele, then Prepare For Me a Shallow Grave is one you have to read.
