The Age Of Darkness #1

There Will Come A Darkness by Katy Rose Pool

Publication Date: September 3, 2019

Summary from NetGalley:

The Age of Darkness approaches.
Five lives stand in its way.
Who will stop it . . . or unleash it?

For generations, the Seven Prophets guided humanity. Using their visions of the future, they ended wars and united nations—until the day, one hundred years ago, when the Prophets disappeared.

All they left behind was one final, secret prophecy, foretelling an Age of Darkness and the birth of a new Prophet who could be the world’s salvation . . . or the cause of its destruction. With chaos on the horizon, five souls are set on a collision course:

A prince exiled from his kingdom.
A ruthless killer known as the Pale Hand.
A once-faithful leader torn between his duty and his heart. 
A reckless gambler with the power to find anything or anyone.
And a dying girl on the verge of giving up.

One of them—or all of them—could break the world. Will they be savior or destroyer?

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ARC provided by Henry Holt and Co. via NetGalley for an honest review.

This one started out a bit slow for me. It took me awhile to figure out who all of the characters were and their stake in the story. The world building was a bit confusing at first as well. But once the story took off, I was pleasantly surprised how much I ended up enjoying it.

The story is told from 5 different points of view. All of the characters are well developed and have very distinctive voices in their narratives. They all have well developed backstories that is doled out slowly throughout the book. There is some growth among some of them, but this being the first book I’m sure that they will all continue to grow and have some depth to them. All of the narrating characters are likable, Jude and Anton were my faves though. I just liked their unsurety of their places in the world. The sister bond between Ephyra and Beru was also solid and helped shape their personalities.

The world building is very well done, although it does take a bit to figure it all out. There are a lot of layers to it, and having the multiple narrators telling/showing their perspective of it made it a bit harder to grasp at first. But once you get it all figured out it becomes a very interesting world. The magical system is a blood based one, and some members of a family are ‘graced’ and some are not. Which makes for some interesting dynamics. There are also different types of grace, which covers healing, warriors, seers and a type of alchemists that can make mechanical objects.

This is more of a plot driven story although the characters are still important. There is a lot of things going on and some of the characters have yet to meet, although they will soon I think. There were some nice plot twists that were not so easy to see until they happen. The evil element of the story was quite scary. They are a cult that wants to wipe out the people what have graces and they are at the point where they just might succeed. There are more people without graces than with, and they are easily swayed to the cult’s way of thinking.

I enjoyed this enough that I will definitely be on the look out for the next book in the series. I enjoyed the author’s writing style and I am invested enough in the story and the characters that I will want to know what happened to them A really strong start to a fantasy series that you might want to consider picking up.