There Will Come a Darkness by Katy Rose Pool REVIEW

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Started: 11/01/20

Finished: 26/01/20

Spoilers: No

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for sending me an e-arc ahead of the UK paperback release. This review is a completely honest breakdown of the book and my personal feelings.

Characters – 0.5 Plot – 0.5 Setting – 0.5 Writing style - 0.5 Final Impression – 0.5 Total – 2.5 / 5

Now look, 2.5 is not (in my opinion) a bad rating and this wasn’t at all a bad book. 2.5 is half the max rating, but I feel I can only rate it half as I felt like at least half of the book was filler, and only half was exciting, engaging, decent content that I genuinely enjoyed. So that half rating is dedicated to the half I enjoyed.

This has been one of my most anticipated reads since I first found it on Goodreads, but unfortunately, it didn't live up to the hype I'd created in my own head. Even so, if you enjoy ensemble casts like Six of Crows or Gilded Wolves, if you enjoy high stakes YA and diverse representation, if you're looking for a chunky fantasy with more on the way, then there's a good chance you'll have a better time at this book than me. Now let's talk specifics.

Characters On the whole, I enjoyed the characters. We have five POV characters whom I mostly cared about, but probably not enough. From the start, I felt more invested in Aton, Beru and Ephyra, and struggled with Hassan and Jude. They felt hollow, flat almost, compared to some of the others. I struggled to invest in everything they were doing and I think this is partly due to the fact that they both split their focus and energy between the main conflict and their love interests.

I didn't care for Khepri. I didn't care for Hector. So caring about Hassan and Jude became a chore when 50% (often-times more) of their time within their respective chapters was dominated by thoughts of their love interests. This book had strong enough characters and a strong enough story to not need romance. It gets in the way and muddies up the pacing and narrative. Sometimes romance adds nothing to a story, and sometimes it only serves to take away value from it.

My opinion was flipped during the latter half of the book, however. With his focus on longer on Hector, I started to enjoy Jude’s character a lot more and would even say he was probably my favourite in the end.

It was during the final conflict that I started to care less and less about Ephyra and Beru, when I realised they had little to no storyline in regards to the main conflict of the book. Outside of briefly tangling their storylines with Anton’s, they pretty much had nothing to do with the story. All they were, in the end, was set-up for a sequel. They did nothing and accomplished even less and were in a completely different country dealing with their own, irrelevant shit, and I just lost interest in them.

That being said, I enjoyed the character development of Jude, Anton and Hassan a lot as they grew into the people they were destined to be from the start.

Plot It does make me wonder: why do YA books nowadays need to be 500 pages long? It's not the length of the book that bothers me (I've read books double this length and loved them), but the thing is, a book with up to, or exceeding, 500 pages has to have an engaging story that can fill 500 pages, without stretching it to fit. When a story stretches longer than it needs to be, it gets a little thin in the middle.

This is absolutely the case here. The story has a strong start, and it was around the 30% mark that I was excited in the story and invested in the characters. But It was around the 40-70% mark that the story stretches thin. It's a typical case of a sagging middle, where the pacing slows down too much to handle some character internal conflict.

But here's the thing, internal conflict is not conflict. It's a subplot. You can't put the main conflict on hold to allow the characters a good ten chapters to internalise and anguish over all their feelings. After interesting twists, reveals and relative action up to this point, the lagging pace is painfully noticeable. More so when this time is used for dream sequences. *sigh*

The pacing is my only real issue with the plot. The idea, and the stakes are exciting and intense, with the promise of a large scale war. Guessing the plot twist at about 40% in was satisfying at first. But then at 70%, with the plot twist still being teased like it's some big reveal and not completely obvious, got real old real fast.

The thing is, this is a great idea and just the sort of thing I enjoy. There’s just too much of it. This book is at least a hundred pages too long. With a little less inner conflict and a little more action, this book has all the ingredients to be something epic.

Setting The world, though I really liked it, was a little difficult to orient myself within. But let me elaborate. To me it had a very distinct 15th-century Grecian feel to it, with the added flavours of Venetian and Ottoman that's often associated with 15th century Greece – especially the migration crisis. If this was intentional, the author did a very good job, because I definitely got those vibes from the way the cities are described. If not intentional, then this was a stroke of genius luck.

Now, with this loosely based time period in my mind, I immediately began to envision the fashion, the level of technology, the quality of life during 15th century Greece. Yes, I know this is fantasy and anything goes, but the first mention of a train station completely threw me.

Many countries are established with a good bit of background history to solidify them, which is great, but what’s seriously lacking however is detail to culture. What define these countries? What differentiates them? What is the fashion and developmental stage are they at as a society? There are no finer details for the reader to paint an image. We get a wide view of the world, but no close-up.

There’s so much to explore here, and yet so much has been neglected to be addressed. This is a very interesting world, but not quite a believable one. Everything is surface-level, shallow. There are some solid foundations here, but it only supports the framework of ideas when it could support a mansion of creativity and depth.

Writing Style I’m a huge fan of multi-perspective books that jump between characters each chapter, and I applaud authors who write in this style. Keeping track of so many characters and weaving all their stories together is difficult, and I think the author did a great job of connecting all the characters, pulling them apart and then connecting them with other characters. Even though there were no scenes where all five of the MCs were together at once, it was never noticeable that they were not yet all connected. The story didn’t lack in character motivation and drive, although I was waiting for them all to come together at the end, and was a little disappointed when that didn’t happen.

I have very few complaints about the writing itself, though. Sometimes it felt like the author was trying too hard to justify the characters emotions. You don't need to explain why he's angry or how he knows he shouldn't be, just let him be angry. Boy's entitled to that.

My only other real complaint is how slow the pacing gets in the middle. The beginning of the story was really strong and the ending was stronger still. It was compulsively readable during the final conflict, I just wish there was more action during those middle scenes, and a bit less wrestling with feelings.

Final Impression I don’t think I’ve read anything so consistently half-baked in every aspect. But if this was a pie, it would definitely have to go back in the oven.

Ultimately, I’m disappointed, but I did set my expectations a little high. The blurb sounded so good, but the story just didn't deliver for me. But I know it will for someone.