Sarah Glenn Marsh

Odessa is known as The Sparrow, a powerful necromancer with the ability to adeptly navigate the Deadlands. She and Evander, her boyfriend, are finally full fledged master necromancers that service the crown and the wealthy members of society who want their loved ones brought back from the dead. The same day they killed and resurrected King Wylding, her mentor Nicanor went into the Deadlands by himself, an oddity for a necromancer, and was killed by a Shade, a spirit of the dead made into a show more cannibal monster. They have to resurrect the King no matter what, even if a dangerous Shade stalks them. The Shade problem isn't restricted to the Deadlands. Royalty and the rich have been disappearing at alarming rates, some turning up as Shades and others gone. Odessa and the other necromancers must band together to solve the mystery before the Shades endanger the enture population.

Reign of the Fallen has a unique world and vibrant characters with realistic thoughts and decisions. Karthia has been ruled by King Wylding for over 200 years and nothing has changed. It's argued that he knows and loves Karthia more than anyone else. There have been no advancement or changes in technology, fashion, policy, or tradition ever. Even if something would improve things, it's soundly ignored due to the deeply held tradition of stagnanace. Vaia, goddess of change, has been completely removed from their pantheon of gods. It felt a little similar to the society in Mistborn, but less toxic. Most people here accept it as law and only the young and powerful subvert in small ways, hidden from public.

The big contributor to the tradition is the continued existence of people, even after they die. Ancestors from generations past can still live among their descendents and affect their decisions. They can't be seen directly and where full body shrouds because they turn to Shades if humans see them. They can also turn if left in a body for so long, hence why Wylding has to be killed and resurrected every so often. So far, this has never been a problem, but Shades are rampaging more and more along with the missing wealthy people. Necromancers go into the Deadlands with honey to reject the food of the afterlife, blood to attract the dead, and milk to pour on the dead's body. Their power is steeped in myths and legends, but also feels different than other renditions.

The magic system makes sense to me and has wide ranging capabilities. In addition to power over the dead, others have the power to heal or power over animals. All magic has a price. Necromancers can't be brought back from the dead and non-mages who go into the Deadlands are no longer fertile. Healing magic leads to temporary numbness and paralysis of the healer's body depending. Power to control animals leads to the mage being animalistic for a time, losing their humanity. All of this is equal to the power they used. I'm a little tired of magic that just appears out of nowhere with no limits instead of having some sort of natural balance.

The characters feel like real people. Odessa has confidence and power, but started out as an orphan who had nothing as a child and was raised by necromancers to be one. Without her power over the dead, she sees herself as only an orphan with nothing to offer, which starts fights with wealthy Evander when he wants to run away from his problems. Beyond this idiocy, her relationship with Evander is sweet and healthy beyond hiding it from his unsupportive mother. After he dies, she starts a self destructive path that starts with the overuse of sedatives and ends at beating the Shade who killed her loved one, probably dying right afterwards. Through her friendships, particularly with princess Valoria and Evander's sister Meredy, Odessa gets to a place where she feels the grief, returns to reality, and moves forward.

The relationships are particularly excellent, especially between women. Valoria started out as unsure of herself and content to hide in the shadows. She built inventions that she hid in her room so the king and court would never see it. Odessa helped her find her voice and see that her opinion has value, which becomes extremely important by the end of the story. Odessa and Meredy at first hate each other and are too wrapped up in their own loss to see how lashing out hurts the other. Over time, they get to know each other and bond over their grief for Evander when open and honest about it. Eventually, they feel romantic feelings for each other that they feel guilt for. It's refreshing to see a bisexual heroine in any media, but I question the choice of Evander's sister. Other than that, it's a very sweet romance.

Reign of the Fallen has wonderful world building, well drawn characters, and action packed scenes right next to quiet, emotional ones. I loved that it has elements of fantasy, horror, and mystery with realistic relationships and grounded people. I figured out the mystery early, which is a big deal for me, but I enjoyed going along on the ride. The ending still surprised me and I would love to read more books by this author and hopefully in this world. The cover put me off a little, but I heard so many good things about this book that I had to read it and I'm definitely glad I did. show less

From the book: ”The mind is a weapon whether you believe in anything or not: faith and denial, they both cut deep if you hold on too tight. Both can be fatal, preventing you from seeing what’s true until there are hands around your throat, wringing out your last breath.” (p. 239)

The main character is a ghost hunter podcaster who doesn't believe in ghosts.

I loved the mysterious house, the evil lake, and the relationship between the three girls. Both romance and friendship worked well show more for me.

Everything crashed down in the end in a way that was too overwhelming while I read it. But the ending has grown on me after I've had some time to think about it. And I think I will keep thinking about this book for a long time. show less

My love affair with this book ended as quickly as it started. While the premise was interesting, the actual execution failed to impress me.

This story seemed like it would be fast-paced, full of action as Odessa tries to figure out what is going on with all of these Shade attacks. Instead, it is about Odessa battling her grief after she loses someone she loves. Now, I have no problem with her feeling grief. But the story doesn't set itself up well for this scenario. For one thing, we don't show more ever really feel the strong romantic connection between Odessa and her partner; it's just something we have to assume is strong. There wasn't enough time given to develop this relationship - and then he dies. The other problem with the grief scenario is that Odessa becomes addicted to potions in order to deal with the pain. With that, my hopes of a strong heroine were dashed. Given the reputation she has (according to what the book tells us), shouldn't she be out there trying to avenge him? Why is she succumbing to addiction? My initial thoughts were that this addiction angle might serve a different purpose later on. It does not. It could have been cut out. And the worst part about it was that this took up almost 50% of the story. That's right, 50% of the story is us reading about Odessa's self-pity and gloom. All this for a relationship that wasn't even fostered deeply in the book.

Not only did Odessa turn to addiction during her time of grief, she also used this time to throw herself into the arms of her best friend. Her need for physical comfort was a little ... well, I didn't like it. I would prefer if she had been a stronger character, or at least relied on her friends in a platonic way. But she chose not to do that.

Moving on from the huge grief aspect, I also thought it was completely bizarre that so many people were willing to throw themselves at Odessa. I couldn't see the appeal. Was it her charm - or lack thereof? Was it some history that they had had previously, which the author had failed to mention? I just found myself perplexed by a lot of the character interactions, and really wished that the author had spent some time giving them more of a backstory so I could follow along. This lack of a backstory and lack of strong world-building really affected my ability to enjoy the story. There were random details thrown in that took me aback because there was no reference to it before that point, and suddenly, it became important. I like my stories to make sense and flow, and this novel didn't do that all the time.

I also found that the actual fighting scenes were a bit dull. When the main character is a necromancer, I expect a lot more scary things to happen, and there just wasn't enough action to keep me engaged. All the action scenes were over quite quickly and left me filling disappointed, like that scene in Breaking Dawn where Alice showed what could have happened if there was a war ... but nothing actually happened (Twilight reference for the win!!!).

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this novel. It had the potential to be dynamic and crazy. While it maintained a fast pace, it didn't have sensible character interactions and really lacked strong backstories and world-building, which would have made this a more engrossing read. Also, Odessa is a very needy character who can't stop falling for other people while grieving for someone who was supposedly the love of her life. It was just too much. I'm giving this a 1.5/5 stars, rounded to 2.

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Review also posted on my blog: https://bennilovesbooks.wordpress.com...

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley while attending LibraryCon Live! This book has content warnings for death and addiction.

I absolutely adored this book. It started off a little slow, but I think that was more of a “me” problem than a book problem — I have a hard time while reading high fantasy because I am the literal worst at remembering names of places and people and things, and fantasy often show more throws a bunch of those things at me at once and I get lost really easily. Once I’d gotten a handful of pages read, though, everything started to pick up the pace, and I devoured it.

I was initially drawn to this book because of the queer characters, and I think Marsh did an excellent job of balancing the relationships between the characters with the rest of the conflict in the novel. Odessa, our MC, is bisexual, and multiple other characters are gay or lesbian as well. The relationships were prominent and important and had space to grow or have conflict, but they didn’t do it at the expense of the rest of the story. This felt incredibly well-balanced, and I really enjoyed it.

I loved the characters in this book. It felt like each character was given a lot of care and depth, and each had their own flaws and personalities. Even the villains in the story had their moments, showing that they were doing what they were doing because they believed it was best for the people. Even while we saw everything from Odessa’s point of view, we still got to really get to know the other characters.

I also really loved Odessa’s addiction arc. I thought it did an excellent job illustrating how addiction can start, why it continues, and how challenging it can be to quit and go through withdrawals and still crave. It was a little painful to read at times because I really empathized with her, and I think it was a nice touch.

While this is a story about necromancy and conspiracy, it’s also ultimately a story about grief and loss. This book is filled with heartbreak on multiple levels, and it tugs at your heartstrings as you see the characters work through their grief while trying to kill Shades and figure out why so many of them are showing up. It’s action-filled and magical and emotional, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

Final rating: 5 of 5 stars show less