They Mostly Come Out At Night

Lonan has spent eight years as an outcast in his forest village, blamed for a monster attack that killed his father. He never developed a Knack, the supernatural talent every other villager carries. His neighbors barricade their cellars each night against the creatures outside. When a fresh string of attacks begins, dreams start pulling Lonan into the mind of Adahy, son of the Magpie King, generations in the past.

They Mostly Come Out at Night opens the Yarnsworld series, a folklore-inspired dark fantasy drawing on Central European and Native American storytelling. Original folktales appear between chapters, filling in the myths behind the Knacks and the Magpie King's rule. They run alongside the two threads that follow Lonan in the present and Adahy in the past.

The book makes no promise of a gentle ending. Violence lands with real weight, and the folktale interludes carry as much darkness as the main story, some of it grim enough to edge toward horror. The pace slows for those interludes, then picks back up with Lonan's search for why the creatures have returned.

It is Benedict Patrick's first novel and the opening book of the Yarnsworld series.