Review: A Poison Dark and Drowning

Title: A Poison Dark and Drowning
Author: Jessica Cluess
Publisher: Random House BFYR
Release Date: September 19, 2017

The magicians want her to lead. The sorcerers want her to lie. The demons want her blood. Henrietta wants to save the one she loves. But will his dark magic be her undoing?

Henrietta doesn’t need a prophecy to know that she’s in danger. She came to London to be named the chosen one, the first female sorcerer in centuries, the one who would defeat the bloodthirsty Ancients. Instead, she discovered a city ruled by secrets. And the biggest secret of all: Henrietta is not the chosen one.

Still, she must play the role in order to keep herself and Rook, her best friend and childhood love, safe. But can she truly save him? The poison in Rook’s system is transforming him into something monstrous as he begins to master dark powers of his own.

So when Henrietta finds a clue to the Ancients’ past that could turn the tide of the war, she persuades Blackwood, the mysterious Earl of Sorrow-Fell, to travel up the coast to seek out strange new weapons. And Magnus, the brave, reckless flirt who wants to win back her favor, is assigned to their mission. Together, they will face monsters, meet powerful new allies, and uncover the most devastating weapon of all: the truth.

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You ever feel like I call all books predictable? It certainly feels that way to me pretty often.

I read A Shadow Bright and Burning two years ago as an arc. I truly loved it, and I was so excited for the second book. But being unable to acquire an ac early,  I waiting until it came out. And then got very busy and unable to read it until a year later. Until now.

So I'm going to point out some of my obvious problems. I read the first book two years ago. I have fairly well forgotten characters and parts of the plot. In fact, I don't even remember faeries being a thing in the first book. But they feature a key role in A Poison Dark and Drowning.

So yes. My memory was a problem while reading this. The other main problem I has was with Rook. I never liked him, and Henrietta just seemed obsessed with him because he was her childhood friend. Why did this have to even be a thing? He became overly jealous and had outbursts that became increasingly violent. And still she obsessed.

And back to the predictability. While I may have had a bad memory about some things from this series, I did have two main predictions I made while reading A Shadow Bright and Burning. Two very outlandish predictions. There is a reason that people hate buddy reading with me, and that's because I see things coming multiple books ahead of time. #sorrynotsorry

So yeah. As I was saying. Both of my weird ideas turned out to be true. I feel like they were both supposed to be huge twists. But I went in under the assumption that these theories were already correct, and was just like, "Oh okay cool. I was right..." when them came to fruition. -Sigh-

Still. I'm always glad to know my weird theories are the ones that seem to be the most correct.

I'm also not 100% on how Blackwood is being maneuvered. I liked him initially, and I still do. But he's turning out to be more manipulative and controlling than even before. And I'm not sure where his future lies. 

Overall

While I'm not overly invested in the story as it stands, I'm glad I finally got around to reading this one, and I will probably pick up the finale at some point when it's out. If you're into alt-history Victorian horror-fantasy, I'd recommend reading the first book in the series and then deciding whether or not you want to continue on.

3 stars