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A review by perusinghannah
There Will Come a Darkness by Katy Rose Pool
2.0
Should I have DNFed this at 30% like I originally wanted to? Yes, absolutely. But I convinced myself I was DNFing too much, and also the last book I nearly DNFed turned out to be a five star read. So I stuck with it against my better judgement, and now here I am disappointed. Please insert the clown emoji.
This really was just your bog-standard YA fantasy that did not surprise nor delight in any way, and I am very much over that kind of YA fantasy. I found the characters to be superficial and therefore boring, the world building was whatever, and the plot was unfortunately far too predictable to land even a single plot twist. As I said though, I'm just particularly tired of this type of YA fantasy, and so all these things aren't necessarily the book's fault. But you know what is? The fact that this does not stand on its own whatsoever.
This is just a giant, 500 page-long introduction to a story that in no way actually takes place in this book. And if you're going to make me sit through 500 pages just to have the characters end up in a place where the story can now finally kick off? Nope, you lost me. Very little of consequence has happened within these pages besides introducing each character as their specific stereotype (predictable red herrings included, of course), and because the rest was all so mediocre, this just pissed me off. If your first book only exists so that the sequel will make sense, you're not structuring your series properly. I will die on this hill.
This was a one and done for me with this author, unfortunately, as I just didn't get on with anything about it. A bit of a bummer, but hey - at least it's one more TBR veteran off my shelves.
This really was just your bog-standard YA fantasy that did not surprise nor delight in any way, and I am very much over that kind of YA fantasy. I found the characters to be superficial and therefore boring, the world building was whatever, and the plot was unfortunately far too predictable to land even a single plot twist. As I said though, I'm just particularly tired of this type of YA fantasy, and so all these things aren't necessarily the book's fault. But you know what is? The fact that this does not stand on its own whatsoever.
This is just a giant, 500 page-long introduction to a story that in no way actually takes place in this book. And if you're going to make me sit through 500 pages just to have the characters end up in a place where the story can now finally kick off? Nope, you lost me. Very little of consequence has happened within these pages besides introducing each character as their specific stereotype (predictable red herrings included, of course), and because the rest was all so mediocre, this just pissed me off. If your first book only exists so that the sequel will make sense, you're not structuring your series properly. I will die on this hill.
This was a one and done for me with this author, unfortunately, as I just didn't get on with anything about it. A bit of a bummer, but hey - at least it's one more TBR veteran off my shelves.