Fall of Ruin and Wrath: 1 (Awakening)

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Without giving too much away, be prepared for classic Armentrout-style big cliffhangers and jaw-dropping twists throughout the book. I’m not a super prudish reader, but when the stories stop telling a story, I start to get annoyed and underwhelmed. However, Lis’s limited world is very sex positive, with the occasional misogynistic comment from secondary characters. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Introduced to the reader as an orphan, the lead female character, Calista (Lis), later ends up as a courtesan to Claude, the Baron of Archwood. She accepts the fact that Claude often uses her as a means to get information, and sends her to other aristos as a “courtesan” even if that’s not her real purpose, yet she is super insulted when Thorne asks Claude to “lend her to him” for the duration of his stay, because he didn’t ask her directly, and she had no say in Claude’s answer. The detailed and vividly depicted dystopian meets high fantasy world building, along with the intricately crafted magic system, is executed flawlessly. I can relate to Lista, similar to her I care a great deal about the people close to me and I'm also brave. When her intuition leads her to save a traveling prince in dire trouble, the voice inside her blazes with warning—and promise.

Caelestias were born and caelestias aged, just like us lowborn, and at twenty-six, Claude had no plans to marry.

You remove gradual world building and add it all up as info dump at 70% (you all know what usually happens at this point of the story). A second passed, and another; then a series of tingles erupted between my shoulder blades and spread up, over the back of my skull. This is another romantasy feather in her cap, rippling with palace intrigue, political drama and plenty of magic.I didn’t feel as if this book set out to check trope boxes like FOURTH WING did (which I enjoyed, for the record). Plus seeing more women take charge and ask for what they want when it came to their own desires, we need more of this. idk man, her superpower is supposed to be her intuition and the whole book she’s so clueless despite clues staring her in the face! The good thing about it was that it was complex but not too complex like there was this perfect amount of complexity that the author achieved. I really enjoyed the first 40% or so of the book, but after that, the middle part dragged on a little.