In advance of the several pieces of fanart soon to hit my queue, I’d like to clarify a couple things about Dark Rise by CS Pacat, and its sequel Dark Heir:
The worldbuilding is SO bad, both in a “what are the horses eating??” way and a “this author does not understand how history or mythology or 1820s England or any sort of collective-human retention of information over time works; this book needs to either be 200x more rooted in its alleged setting or set on an entirely fantasy world” way. The best thing you can say is that the random cut-and-pasted magazine images of it do, in fact, each look badass as hell.
It’s DISTRACTING bad if you care about those things. It’s continuously distractingly bad, for 2/3–3/4 of the first book.
Unfortunately, the plot, emotions, and messy character dynamics then abruptly kick the FUCK into gear, and it ends really strong, such that you’re left standing there (with a cursed(?) sword and a bunch of corpses, some wanted, some horribly not, and a terrible secret and the world’s most embittered unicorn) going, “…Fuck, I do have to read the sequel.”
Also, saying this outright bc you the reader are likely following me on tumblr: there’s mind control(/reincarnation)-laced homoerotic fealty!
This is a book rec with caveats, basically. Read for the characters and the terrible pressure of the past, but maybe don’t start reading until you have time to blast through the frustrating first 300 pages.
The worldbuilding doesn’t actually improve after that, btw. The good just starts significantly outweighing the bad.
TLDR I’m so annoyed that I liked these books so much. Do NOT read my tags on the fanart btw; There Be Spoilers. This is all @rattyjol‘s fault.
