This would've ate if it had been written as adult fantasy. It almost seemed like Pacat was holding back.

The ""twist"" at the end was not surprising at all but it felt like the story WANTED me to be surprised which made the ending feel anticlimactic.

The characters... I don't care about any of them??? Maybe it's because I read the book so fast to finish it, but I felt that I didn't spend very much time with any of them. When Justice died I just did not care because he felt like the mouthpiece for the plot, just listing off world-building pieces and exposition when necessary. Will is a rather bland main character, in my opinion. Even if he is the reincarnation of some Sauron, DARK KING™️ type. And I usually LIKE those!

I will not speak on James. I liked James. We all liked James. Pacat certainly liked James. Will DEFINITELY liked James. James is fine and probably has the most potential for a good, satisfying arc out of every character in this series. 

Also, I would love some more insight into the world-building for this series. Look, the math isn't math-ing in my head and despite having this premise of taking place years after this great, magical war, the world feels so...empty? Characters hop around the map like it's nothing, arriving at destinations within sentences. The training the characters go through happens so fast. I know that's probably to cut the fat and get to the meat of the story, but it makes everything feel so rushed and sudden in the last half.

I've been pulled through the epic high fantasy genre's asshole so many times that I've become accustomed to a certain level of finesse, and Dark Rises' world-building feels like it was created to tell this specific story rather than existing as a setting where these characters could so happen to, well, exist. ((I know this probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but it makes perfect sense in my head and that's all that really matters to me. I also know that this book isn't epic fantasy, but it is high fantasy. )) Even the made-up language looks weird. Did Pacat base it off of a real language? Let me know.

Anyways, the book was well-written, as expected from Pacat. There are two books left and I trust her so--