Dark Rise

For me, C.S. Pacat has been a relatively  no-brainer author for me. Their works are rarely perfect, but have consistently captivated me. Some are ruthless and full of content warning-worthy topics (Captive Prince), and others are overdramatic sports comics about a bunch of queer teens in a fencing club. Dark Rise seemed like a natural book that I’d love. However, I found it extraordinarily lacking compared to Pacat’s other works, and I struggled a lot with this one.

Elevator Pitch:

In the midst of London’s industrial revolution, the Dark King is about to rise once more, ready to destroy the world. Will is the descendent of the Dark King’s only real foe, and is humanity’s only hope. Violet is a younger sister to an influential paladin for the Dark King’s cause. Together, they join with a mysterious organization called The Stewards, who are committed to keeping the Dark King from rising. 

What Worked for Me:
If Pacat can be trusted to do anything, you can bet on them pulling a massive amount of romantic tension out of something blatantly toxic. Will and James (a member of the Dark One’s extended organization of servants) manage to make a pseudo-torture interrogation scene extremely compelling as an instigating point for their relationship. There’s no actual sex happening in this book, but CS Pacat doesn’t want you to realize that. This book includes a lot of kink-coded references hard-coded into the fantasy plotlines of the story (including a dom/sub magic collar), and is certainly not a book I’d hand out to more advanced young readers (as opposed to being very well-done for the more typical side of the YA market). While the character archetypes and personalities are different than the Captive Prince series, the romance vibes are going to feel very familiar, including a blonde twink with more trauma than he knows what to do with. Again, this book is no model of healthy romances, and I’d describe this book as the first chunk of a slow-burn romance. If you aren’t worried about getting hung up on realistic relationship models but instead want something that feels a lot like Frodo/Saruman fanfic set in modern London, then Dark Rise’s romance plotline is going to do a lot for you.

Unfortunately, it’s only around 20% of the book, and that’s really the only bit I enjoyed.

What Didn’t Work for Me:
I found quite a bit of this to be fairly predictable, but ultimately a bland book. When Pacat isn’t in their wheelhouse of brooding gazes and catty arguments, the storyline gets muddled and lost. There isn’t much of a narrative voice (either from the narrator or our viewpoint characters), the pacing felt like a convoluted set of reasons for characters to meet each other, and the big twists had been executed more effectively many times before. The entire story dragged, and I kept putting off this book because I just wasn’t finding the energy to return to it. 

I think the biggest culprit of the lackluster main plot was Violet. She had the more interesting plotline and situation (older brother destined to kill her, evil faction seeing the light, etc) had a lot more potential than Will. However, Violet seemed present mostly as a vehicle to move Will’s plot forward, and there wasn’t an interesting-enough personality to anchor her reason for being featured as a Main Character when clearly nobody (including the author) thinks she should be. In the end though, Violet was one of many characters who seemed to exist mostly as limousines to shuttle Julian and Will to their destinies, and she wasn’t even the worst offender. She just was the one given around half the POVs of the book after her initial familial-betrayal storyline played itself out.

Conclusion: If you’re looking for YA m/m enemies to lovers romances, there’s much better out there. As YA fantasy, it’s a pretty bad one. As a book, I was disappointed by an author who has previously won a lot of trust with me.