Today’s the day! Who’s ready for the There Will Come a Darkness Readalong Recap?

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!!

Spoilers below!

If you haven’t read There Will Come a Darkness by Katy Rose Pool, STOP NOW, run and grab the book, then come back to us to get the full part one summary of this unforgettable fantasy. But if you’re in the right place and ready to dive in... LET’S DO THIS!

ICYMI below is the schedule of the readalong happening all this month. Make sure to visit us here every Thursday for the next part of the recap, and follow our friends @bibliophile_nikki/ @bibliophileniki and @utopia.state.of.mind/ @UtopiaMind who are helping us out with parts 2 and 3.

Week 1: 8/10—8/16
Part One: Harbinger
Chapters 1-12: Team Fierce Reads and @KatyRosePool

Week 2: 8/17—8/23
Part Two: Oath
Chapters 13-43: @bibliophile_nikki

Week 3: 8/24—8/30
Part Three: The Tower
Chapters 44-end: @utopia.state.of.mind / @UtopiaMind

Let's not forget the fan art contest happening all this month. Enter #TWCADFanArt here for a special prize!

Now that that’s over, let’s get this recap started!

Part One: Harbinger To say the world is in flux is an understatement: The seven prophets are gone, the Graces are being hunted, and death and corruption are running rampant. It’s here that we meet our five characters: The Protector, The Assassin, The Prince, The Innocent, and The Gambler. Stuff is going down as we open to a scene filled with blood. The killer (the Pale Hand!!) has added another victim to her long list, a priest in Pallas Athos, the City of Faith (more like faithless). To the people of Pallas Athos, the Pale Hand is a ruthless, cold-blooded killer... all of that is true, but she’s also just a teenage girl named Ephyra, who uses the blood of her victims (usually awful people themselves), to keep her younger sister Beru alive. In these early moments, we learn that Ephyra will do whatever it takes to keep Beru’s terminal illness at bay, even if it means betraying all of the morals that those who have the Grace of Blood should hold dear: Do no harm and only heal. Next, we meet up with Hassan, the prince of Nazariah, who has just escaped his home after a coup by the Witnesses and the Hierophant aka the big bad. Hierophant has made himself into a new figure of worship now that the prophets are gone. He's ridding the world of the Graced, wiping out cities, and killing as many people as he chooses–that includes Hassan’s parents who were captured. Hassan was lucky enough to escape to his aunt’s home in Pallas Athos. But Hassan just can’t let things lay quiet even though he doesn’t have a Grace to help him. So off he goes into the city against his Aunt’s wishes, and of course, dude finds himself in trouble. But who comes to his rescue but the fighter and Legionnaire/refugee, Khepri. Khepri, who managed to escape the coup, is seeking a way to help her people and find Prince Hassan... DUN DUN DUN. Little does she know she found him. In the midst of all this drama there’s Anton, who just wants to be left alone... from the brother who’s hunting him down; from the nameless, mysterious woman who wants him to join her scrying agency; and from his Grace of Sight, the rarest Grace, which allows him to use the vibrations of the world to find people. Always on the run, he gets by through gambling and cheating. Until he meets... Jude is the next in line to become Keeper of the Word and devote his entire life to protect the Last Prophet. Stay true, Jude, because you’re that much closer to your mission: the Last Prophet has been found! Off he goes to set out and find him, taking his hand-selected Paladin Guards to help, including his childhood BFF, Hector... who’s also his secret crush. Jude knows he has to remain focused on his goal to find and protect the Last Prophet, but Hector’s always had a hold on him that’s getting harder to deny, even if breaking his oath means death. Things really start to come together as the characters’ paths begin to collide when Ephrya hears that there a way to save her sister once and for all. Of course, this murder-y maven jumps at the chance, and off she goes to track down the one person who can help her: Anton. Using his Grace, he can scry for the Chalice artifact, but Anton doesn’t want anything to do with Ephyra. Only when she promises to do what she does best, kill Anton’s brother, freeing him from his past demons, does he agree to help her... OF COURSE. Pact made. Let’s not forget about our ever faithful Keeper of the Word, Jude, and his Paladin Guards who just showed up on the scene and requested Hassan’s presence. What do they want with this graceless prince, who’s been lying to everyone about his identity? To tell him that he is the Last Prophet, the one said to have the power to stop the Age of Darkness.

AHHHHH!!!!!!!

So much is in store for this mysterious ensemble cast. Stay tuned and find out what’s to come when our friends @bibliophile_nikki and @utopia.state.of.mind / @UtopiaMind dive into parts 2 and 3.

But wait, no recap would be complete without the master behind the words herself, author Katy Rose Pool.

These first 150 pages of There Will Come a Darkness​,​ were rewritten no fewer than twenty times. Each time I figured out more about the characters, the world, and the story. With each draft, I got better at seamlessly unveiling these things to the reader.

Beginnings are always hard for me, but there are a few passages from Harbinger that stand out to me because they made it from the very earliest draft to the finished book relatively untouched. One of them is the scene in the first Anton chapter, where the Nameless Woman shows up at the taverna, and they have this tense yet somewhat playful conversation. She reveals that someone is looking for him, which is intercut with a flashback revealing how the two of them met. The dynamic between these two was so clear to me from the very beginning––her general mysterious demeanor, his standoffishness, and the slight undercurrent of affection between them even without real trust. Those exchanges pretty much stayed the same through every draft of this book (and that was a lot of drafts!)

Another scene that was carried through from the very first draft to the last is the flashback that Jude has right before he chooses Hector as his last Guard member. I remember how the original version of that flashback poured out of me so easily. It was my first big breakthrough about Jude––who he really was, what he wanted, and what he thought was impossible to want. So much of the story surrounding these scenes changed throughout writing this book, but they survived!