There Will Come a Darkness

This is a solid Y/A fantasy novel and a fairly quick read. The characters are interesting, but the overall plot was fairly obvious. I found myself skimming sections without feeling like I was missing much. The frequent shifts in POV helped drive the plot along, but also led to a lack of character development and world building.

In the middle of the novel Beru mentions having a train ticket and I was honestly surprised that trains exist in this universe - it otherwise feels like a pre -industrial fantasy world. Trains imply an advancement past the swords and crossbows other characters are using. They also mention one of the graces allows people to create magical inventions, like incandescent lights and trains, but I wish this concept had been more fleshed out. If a graced person makes an incandescent light, do they have to use their own energy to keep it lit? Or does it just exist separately from its creator? Does each train have to have graced person acting as fuel and conductor? Can people pool their esha's together to make bigger things, like the Lighthouse in Nazirah (that is supposedly so impressive, though they never really explain why)? Can people have more than one grace? What percentage of the population is graced? I wasn't entirely sure if it was supposed to be a rare gift, since it seemed like so many characters had it, and other than the Witnesses most people were kind of blase about these magic powers.

The scale of the world was also murky - at one point Jude mentions it will take 5 days to get from wherever their mountain hideout is to Pallas Athos. But later, traveling by boat and train to Nazirah and Medea seems to take no time at all, making it feel like Herat is the size of Delaware.

Also, ends on a cliffhanger, which was frustrating.