Well well well. 

“I think what people were is less important than what they are. And what people are is less important than what they could be.”

[Moment of fangirling: WHAT WAS THAT ENDING???? ALSO, PACAT, JAMES AND WILL BETTER BE ENDGAME!!]

Look, its very simple: everything Pacat writes, I read! I love every single book! This book is filled with mystery, intrigue and truly unexpected plot-twists. It also has a well-structured plot and well-developed characters. It has everything to be a favorite of mine! And it is! I loved it!

I can't wait for Dark Heir. Totally recommend!

really enjoyed dark rise. the plot twist was so good! it explained things very well and explained my unanswered questions and confusion.

like why Will was able to touch the stone and blade. why katherine was sort of attracted to Will and kissed him out of nowhere (rip).

james was probably the best character in this. i didn’t figure out until the middle/end that he was the ‘love interest’ though but that’s okay. 

amazing cliffhanger ending, super excited to read book two. 

what is this bs
and when is the next one coming out 👹😀

I had really high hopes for this one because it was set in old London, with a magical world hidden from the eyes of humans, and an ancient war the main characters are thrust into. Plus, we have some queer and poc rep! 

 

However, it felt lacking on quite a few levels. Maybe because it's a YA novel, and I just didn’t check the genre beforehand? Idk. But I believe YA could be good if it were written well; this book was… not. 

 

First of all, do you know the miscommunication trope? It felt like the author was miscommunicating to the readers the whole time. Yes, there was foreshadowing, but it was to lead us all in a different direction, only for the author to “plot twist” us all in the last 50 pages. While some foreshadowing worked for both storylines, the original wrong one and the plot-twist right one, there was no way we could have seen the twist coming, which is the opposite of the whole point of foreshadowing, I feel. 

 

The author also had the mc spout monologues to explain what was going on, as if the mc just ~Knew~ what was going on the whole time. And even though we were in his POV most of the time, there were no hints as to what he actually knew. 

 

AND THERE WAS NO HUMOR??? Literally, the only two funny parts were unintentional. It was not meant to be funny, but it was too absurdist not to chuckle. PSA! WE NEED MORE HUMOR IN FANTASY! PLEASE! 

 

Also, it tried to follow the trope of having all MC parents be dead/abusive so they wouldn’t hold the heroes back from their adventure. It felt overdone and didn’t help me get into the novel. I felt like rolling my eyes. 

 

For example, the author made a POC character, only to

have her adopted parents be racist and abusive in order to force her into a hero’s journey. And then it was never discussed again.

Being Indian isn’t a plot device; it's part of her character, and I wished there was more fleshed out for her. She was also described as boyish/manly, which I didn’t appreciate. Not simply because she was the only POC character as far as I could tell, but because

she trains to become a strong fighter, and her “manliness” is given as one of the reasons she’s interested in swords and learning to fight. You can be feminine and like swords, goddammit. She doesn’t need to be masculine to like sword fighting!

 

Second of all, the queer rep was disappointing. We don’t really get a hint that Will, our MC, is bi until he

kisses a girl who I’m pretty sure is his cousin. Gross. And it’s not explained away. Later, when we realize he somehow knew the truth the whole time, none of the characters even blink once about it. It’s just not addressed.

Prior to him

kissing his cousin,

we are lead to think he’s gay; given what we are told, he appreciates other people’s “boyish” looks. To me, it felt like his attraction to women was just a plot point to build a single point of unidentifiable foreshadowing. It was not written to be a part of his character. Which sucks. 

 

Another weird thing for me was reading the POVs of the women in the book. They all had an underlying tone that they had crushes on Will. There was no reason that needed to be in there. Like the author could have just written it, so that wasn’t the case. Idk why they chose to do that; there was no point in us reading about a bunch of women crushing on, who we thought, was a gay man. It’s just uncomfortable. 

 

And finally! The gay romance. Firstly, the only queer romance in here was between MLM, white, pretty boys. Which is OK to have in a book, those types of characters can be wonderful. But this story wrote all of them as being extremely powerful but extremely submissive, which is just another form of harmful representation. And all of the gay romances are highly sexualized, down to stabbing scenes containing crazy sexual subtext. It made me extremely uncomfortable to read, and that’s REALLY saying something bc I like a good horny romance. This is just not a good horny. Rip. 

 

I don’t know. With how this book was explained, I was hoping to see more of a variety of queer rep, at least healthy queer rep!

 

It just didn’t feel well done. Sorry guys!

First half of the book seems just fine when reading for the first time, but man on the reread the whole book was really enjoyable.  The second half of the book was a “read-in-one-session” kinda deal for both my first and second read through, and the way the history/lost civilization stuff unravels is everything to me

Honestly I think I liked it better the second time around for spoiler reasons but once you can piece everything together it is just so satisfying

original rating = 4/5
reread rating = 5/5

I’m sure there are plenty of valid criticisms of this book but tbh the last 50ish pages are burned into my brain forever so I’m unwilling to accept them

If Daddy Tolkien has taught the kids anything, one would hope it would be the importance of world building. The Granddaddy of Fantasy, the man constructed a universe and a history from the foundation up and dedicated his career to fortifying his creation. While Pacat wants to do a lot of begging and borrowing and stealing from Middle Earth and the larger canon of Campbell's Hero's Journey, it is clear that they are not interested in sticking around in their world longer than their  trilogy, and it creates some wear and tear at the edges.

What do you have here? The return of a Dark King, a hidden (albeit non-elfin) city, magical objects that enslaved human kings, and a "shining lady." (Plus, also a lot of Harry Potter and Star Wars-adjacent Hero's Journey tropes.)
What else did you have? Too much. This is supposed to feel like the first book in a trilogy, yet it felt like a standalone work. You have every trope of every major fantasy series stuffed into this single <500 page volume. You have mass slaughters. You have magical romances begun, then ended, and then new ones begun. You have torture and then escape. You have slaughter. You have first, second, and third reveals about each individual character. I cannot fathom reading another two books that can sustain this momentum, yet I also worry that I could be just as exhausted at the end of each installment.

Finally, while I haven't read their Captive Prince trilogy, I know there has been some discourse around their use of enslavement as the precipitation for romance. While I won't give away too much for those who want to read Dark Rise (DM me here or on Instagram - also @criticalgayze), I will say that this book doesn't make the best case for Pacat. While I have the CP trilogy on my shelves as a planned read this year, I will be entering it a little more wearily.

Now, I did give the book 3-stars because Pacat is clearly a talented writer. This was fast-paced with an intriguing universe, even if I did want it to be a little more fleshed out, and the first half especially is a very enjoyable read before you begin to feel a little gorged as a reader.