Dark One, Vol. 1

 Dark One, Vol. 1, by Brandon Sanderson, illustrated by Nathan C. Gooden and Kurt Michael Russel, 224 pages.

Visions of a dark world haunt Paul Tanasin, as do visions of himself doing violence to the people around him. It turns out this other world is not just a long term hallucination, but rather glimpses of a world called Mirandus. This world is ruled by a force called "The Narrative" which essentially dictates that the same story must play out over and over again. The Dark One must rise up, rally the native population of the planet, and try to destroy everything. Then a destined hero chosen by the narrative will rise up to stop them. Paul is destined to be this Dark One.

I really like this author, and thought there was a chance he would do something very unique with the fated destroyer trope (James Kennedy's The Order of Odd Fish does, and I thought it was brilliant). But unfortunately there just wasn't a whole lot of originality here. It was fine overall, but I didn't take much away from it.