Part cautionary tale, part juicy love story, this will appeal to action and adventure fans who aren't yet sick of the genre.īlack is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy. My eyebrows are dangling from the ceiling.” For all of her independence and superpowers, Juliette never moves beyond her role as a pawn in someone else’s schemes.

Overreliance on metaphor to express Juliette’s jaw-dropping surprise wears thin: “My mouth is sitting on my kneecaps. Fast-paced action scenes convey imminent danger vividly, but there’s little sense of a broader world here. The ending falls flat as the plot devolves into comic-book territory. But Adam belongs to a resistance movement he helps Juliette escape to their stronghold, where she finds that she’s not the only one with superhuman abilities. Unfortunately, he’s a soldier under orders from Warner, a power-hungry 19-year-old. Adam, it turns out, is immune to her deadly touch. After months of isolation, her captors suddenly give her a cellmate-Adam, a drop-dead gorgeous guy. Juliette’s journal holds her tortured thoughts in an attempt to repress memories of the horrific act that landed her in a cell. Juliette was torn from her home and thrown into an asylum by The Reestablishment, a militaristic regime in control since an environmental catastrophe left society in ruins. The cast has a wide variety of skin tones, and there’s positive, casual representation and acceptance of queer and nonbinary characters.Ī dystopic thriller joins the crowded shelves but doesn't distinguish itself. Once the action starts, however, the heroes’ breaks between facing all manner of men and monsters-notably undead Ashlander armies-become shorter and shorter, building to a nail-biting reckoning of a climax.

The journeys of Amhara assassin Sorasa and former Gallish squire Andry, who grapple with changed loyalties, are especially notable for how they play out within the group’s dynamics. The first act is slow, as the characters plan their next moves and their individual story arcs are established. Most of the viewpoints are those of Corayne and her present Companions, with occasional perspectives from other characters (such as Queen Erida, sympathetic in her struggles against sexism despite her evil goals, and Ridha, searching for allies and finding something more) who offer peeks at the rest of the world. Readers may need to refresh themselves with Realm Breaker (2021), as this sequel drops readers right in the thick of the action involving numerous individuals (many of them point-of-view characters) and countries in the story’s complicated geopolitical landscape. The Companions-Corayne and her fellow ragtag band of unlikely heroes-have won the first battle, but the war is far from over. Follows Corayne’s continuing quest to save the world from the demon god who is seeking to invade.

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