Reviews - Dark Rise, Volume 1

5.37k reviews for:

Dark Rise, Volume 1

C.S. Pacat

4.13 AVERAGE

lauren_mcl's review against another edition

5.0

This is a 5 star review from my heart, and not from my brain, which had to read variations on the phrase "his mother's old servant Matthew" 16 times.

mara_xx's review against another edition

5.0

Los últimos capítulos me tuvieron con la boca abierta, cada revelación era más impactante y mejor que la anterior, lo ame.

moonsickn3ss's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

andreaariza_17's review against another edition

5.0

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

wecutthenight's review against another edition

5.0

Holy cow I loved this book so so much. The beginning is well paced, however I found that the middle of the plot was a little slow and not as action packed as I would have liked, BUT THE END I loved the end, I finished it at 2 in the morning and I just sat there staring at a wall for like 10 minutes. I cannot WAIT for the next books in the series. Jesus Christ I don’t even know how to put into words how much I loved this book overall. Like… DAYUM C.S. Pacat writes fantasy so goddamn well

tenderest's review against another edition

2.5

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

see, this should’ve been an adult novel. while this is my first cs pacat book, i can’t help but think that everything about this book would’ve been better if the juvenile unfolding of ifs plot hadn’t held it back.

it’s not necessarily the writing style but the leaps the characters take in the reader’s service. the writer doesn’t seem to trust the reader with its lore, its twists and its turns. its lore is dumped via dialogue. halfway through the book, i understood the final plot twist. and it was still spelled out to me as if i am in 8th grade. i usually take books for what they are and don’t judge ya fantasy for its hacks, but it is starkly obvious that it is detrimental to this book in particular. but in that, i can’t attest to whether this is a cs pacat thing or a ya thing.

while it lingers on its tragedies, it doesn’t trust the reader to react emotionally to its emotional beats. and it gets meandering. i found myself skimming the post-massacre ordeals. yes i understand the tragedy as it is and feel for them, no need to repeatedly remind me why it is sad. i’ve followed these characters, i feel for them.

this drinks from the tolkien fountain heavily; dark shadow kings returned to rule over others and wreck havoc: the nazgûl. the dark king who rules over all and whose will overrules all others: sauron-adjacent. sauron if he was written by a fujoshi. that part i respected deeply. but my appreciation of it dwindles before the sloppy, generic worldbuilding.

there’s nothing about the old world of cs pacat’s ‘dark rise’ and its relics and its stewards and heralds that makes it enticing. considering its later themes of desire and who the main characters ends up being—this is rather disappointing.

simon as a villain falls so flat it upsets me. a man who is so heavily build up and whom you don’t see on the page until the final chapters and only to watch him pathetically fail. everything about how others talk of him makes him out to seem like a master strategist. and yet! crumples to the floor by the main character’s hand.

his end goal, too, is ridiculously cartoonish. “i wish to bring back the old world!” why yes maybe i would’ve cared for that if the author had bothered to make the old world actually interesting, or even the current world, for that matter. i’ve seen this better executed in other characters. i think i would’ve liked to feel conflicted and sympathize more with the villain’s objective. but maybe i’ve been to spoiled by the likes of emet-selch and this wasn’t needed. i would’ve still liked to see it.

‘the new world must die so the old one may be reborn’ is a staple of fantasy writing. but there is nothing about the new world that is particularly precious to exist: cs pacat’s london is a hollow shell of a setting. the main character has no tie to it other than this just happens to be where he was “born” and the nauseatingly generic fantasy fact that ending the world = bad.

i wish this book had done something different with its proposition, but alas, i’ve seen this better executed in mmos.

i liked james. he is the most interesting part of the book and the author knows it too: he commands every scene that he is in. his dynamic with the protagonist is delicious. pacat fujoshed out, i know it. i love it. real recognize real. the enticing nature of possession borne out of ancient desire is outstandingly written. i wish it was so for everything the book tries to do. i wish i saw it more often in other fiction. maybe how cs pacat wrote this is how she has convinced me to read ‘captive prince’.

poor katherine was but a plot device tossed between these two men, bringing to mind a particularly egregious staple of fiction focused on mlm birthed in the throes of 2015 tumblr fanfiction writing: the female character who’s there to confuse the audience about the mlm character’s sexuality only to be promptly be tossed aside once the red herring is no longer needed. it’s not problematic as much as it is unimaginative.

all in all, ‘dark rise’ is an attempt at a ya dark fantasy that falls obscenely flat. a poor execution and a meandering, generic worldbuilding.

but james and will.

onto the second one.