The first of Kian N. Ardalan‘s Mistland novels, Eleventh Cycle is large-scale dark fantasy in the vein of series like R. Scott Bakker‘s Prince of Nothing and Glen Cook’s Black Company which takes quite a bit of inspiration from the Dark Souls family of video games.
For most of the first half however it’s ‘merely’ dark fantasy. Despite having a content warning in the Foreword the atmosphere is remarkably aspirational with the protagonists gaining more than they lose. Only near that halfway point (roughly equivalent to where a normal-sized novel would end) do events become quite grim indeed as everything starts coming tumbling down.
This result is mirrored by in-universe stories, implying that building something up only to tear it down may become a running theme. An unfortunate development for me if so, since while I like seeing the seemingly broken characters overcome their struggles I do not like the foreboding that comes along with expecting them to be re-broken once more afterward.