Review: There Will Come a Darkness by Katy Rose Pool

Book: There Will Come a Darkness
Author: Katy Rose Pool
Series: The Age of Darkness #1
Publication: September 3, 2019

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. As chaos takes hold, 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? Perfect for fans of Throne of Glass, Children of Blood and Bone, and An Ember in the Ashes. 

An ancient prophecy of doom, a cast of characters who honestly shouldn't have anything to do with one another, cat-and-mouse chases, betrayals, mysteries with half-answers that only lead to more questions, plot twists... Everything a great book should have!

This book features 5 main characters: Hassan, a prince who escaped his kingdom during a massive coop, Ephyra, an assassin, Beru, Ephyra's younger sickly sister, Jude, a solider who is charged with a very important mission, and Anton, a gambler. What was so great about them all was that at no point, they should have crossed paths (except for Ephyra and Beru) because absolutely none of them trusted one another. That also made their dynamics very interesting; through everyone else, they are connected, but at no point were they ever in the same room or working towards the same goal. Rather, everything overlapped here and there, making it all seem very coincidental (or fateful) that events kept happening to bring them to cross paths separately!

The magic system is similar to the Grisha universe's, where there are four main "Graces" that are associated with specific abilities. Physical strength, healing, foresight, and imbuing objects with magic. We get to explore the first three of them, as characters had these abilities. I'm hoping another character will pop up in the next book with the ability to imbue magic into objects, since that's the one that's most unique to this magic system!

Now, the plot. Or rather, the plot twists. There were so many! I only saw one of them, though the book nearly had me convinced I had been imagining things. The others? Well, they just kept coming. It was a big cat-and-mouse game at one point, where certain characters were being hunted, but who was hunting them and why kept changing faster than the characters could keep up with and understand. We're talking figures from the past reappearing, revelations, and tons of betrayals from the main characters and minor characters themselves. That made the pace very fast and gripping.

The beginning of the book was a smidge hard to get into with all the character POVs that were seemingly unconnected in any way, but it did pick up a bit afterwards. Some of the characters have a long way to grow, but I'm hoping that's where the second and third book come in!