My writing group read the first two chapters of my WIP and agreed that I was starting from such a dark place that they would expect the book to go toward the light. I hadn't planned to, of course. Is there a danger in making your protagonist so dark it becomes tiresome. When I say dark, I don't mean she's Hannibal Lector, of course. But she's inhabiting a pretty dismal place. How dark is too dark to sustain a novel?