Fans of the Blood and Ash series will rejoice at this new novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author and BookTok sensation, Jennifer L. Armentrout. Fall of Ruin and Wrath is the first in The Awakening series and follows the story of Lis, a ‘lowborn’ with powers of intuition and insight. When her path collides with a mysterious Hyhborn she finds herself playing a dangerous political game while trying to fight her attraction to him, and her unerring intuition.
The beginning of the book very quickly introduces the reader to the world’s mechanisms, which can be a bit disorientating. I found it akin to walking into a room not knowing anybody nor the language they were speaking. This made the pacing in the first half to feel a bit slow as it set the scene on the characters, the world, and their relationships. In saying that though, the world takes a lot of common elements found in the fantasy genre that a lot of readers would be familiar with, whilst giving it its own unique twist. Around halfway through, the plot did begin taking off as more action began to take place and you began to understand everything a little more.
There were a lot of predictable outcomes with a lot of tried-and-true tropes. The most notable tropes include found family, ‘who did this to you’, alphahole, class differences, and of course, fated mates.
While there were a lot of components familiar to the romantasy genre, there were a couple of elements which a lot of readers wouldn’t expect. I was delighted when one revelation in particular challenged my romantasy expectations, bringing in elements from other genres I didn’t anticipate. Admittedly, I still don’t know what genre to categorise this book now, but in a really good way.
I found Lis’ character development felt bit two-dimensional with very obvious motivations clearly stated early on and repeated throughout the whole book. If this series is like Blood and Ash though, I anticipate seeing her character grow over the rest of the series. She’s still a compelling character and very likeable, but she has a lot of potential to grow into a favourite.
As the main male character, Thorne was the only other person who was created with some substance and back story, and I can already see BookTok and Bookstagram making Thorne their next “book boyfriend”.
I will say that I would have loved to have seen more from a couple of the side characters, specifically one of Lis’ friends Naomi who was quite enjoyable but only had one or two main scenes. Ultimately it made it a little hard to care about anything that happened to them, but I really wanted to.
In true Armentrout fashion, this book does contain some adult scenes, however I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as a primarily spicy book. While some of the explicit scenes weren’t exactly necessary (when are they, I guess?), the book is mainly plot focused and the scenes made sense in context.
There were a couple of borderline cringey elements to the supernatural race, the Hyhborn, who feed off pleasure in a way similar to a succubus. As a being designed to produce pleasure to feed from, a couple of their abilities seemed like they came from the wildest ideas that a fantasy man should have that were thrown around at a hen’s party. Outside of that, the spicy scenes were well written and suitably placed throughout the book with chemistry that was palpable and well-built from the main character’s first encounter.
While the worldbuilding made the beginning seem a bit slow, Armentrout is clearly laying the groundwork for a spectacular series and in the end did a superb job tying it all together and leading the reader to realisations just before they were revealed. The ending will definitely leave you on the edge of your seat, impatiently waiting for the next instalment in this series.
Fall of Ruin and Wrath is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of September 12th.
Will you be picking up Fall of Ruin and Wrath? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
SHE LIVES BY HER INTUITION. HE FEEDS ON HER PLEASURE.
Long ago, the world was destroyed by gods. Only nine cities were spared. Separated by vast wilderness teeming with monsters and unimaginable dangers, each city is now ruled by a guardian―royalty who feed on mortal pleasure.
Born with an intuition that never fails, Calista knows her talents are of great value to the power-hungry of the world, so she lives hidden as a courtesan of the Baron of Archwood. In exchange for his protection, she grants him information.
When her intuition leads her to save a traveling prince in dire trouble, the voice inside her blazes with warning―and promise. Today he’ll bring her joy. One day he’ll be her doom.
When the Baron takes an interest in the traveling prince and the prince takes an interest in Calista, she becomes the prince’s temporary companion. But the city simmers with rebellion, and with knights and monsters at her city gates and a hungry prince in her bed, intuition may not be enough to keep her safe.
Calista must follow her intuition to safety or follow her heart to her downfall.
