Nothing is ever as it seems. Especially when you unintentionally stumble into a fantasy world.

As a perfectly ordinary human, the last thing I ever expected was to find myself thrown headfirst into a world of fae, magic—sorry, energy manipulation, and dragons.

Dragons who also happen to be gods, revered amongst the multitude of fae races.

Known as the Fallen Five, they crash landed in Risest decades ago, when their home world was destroyed… or so they thought.

They were all deceived.

It turns out that the traitor in their midst, the very reason I was brought into the land of Risest and kept as a pet traitor-sleuth, was none other than their mother.

A mother-dragon who is hell bent on invading their world and burning everything down around them.

The Fallen Five have no choice now but to work together, uniting their five lands for the first time since they fell to Risest.

Divided they are weak, but united they have a chance.

My place in this battle is beyond every belief. My destiny greater than feels possible, but I know I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure my friends and family survive this battle.

Even if it means I must make the hardest decision of them all.

Okay, I have a problem with this book. The character relationships. I didn’t touch on them much in my last review, outside of Morgan’s friendship with Lexie and her relationship with Zahak and Drager. Here’s the thing. The world-building is on point. The plot is adventurous and expressive. But the character interactions, specifically the interaction between Morgan and other characters, feel manufactured, forced, and incompatible. It reads like they’ve known each other for years, like there have been pages and pages of friendship where there has been nothing but silence. Suddenly, she knows all the fallen five very well. There is a disconnect because, as the reader, I haven’t seen these interactions organically occur between the characters or the evolution of the relationships. It put me at the fence while reading. I found it completely 180 from the characters’ obliviousness that Morgan was a fated mate. Now there is too much familiarity and nothing to back it up.

I did make one assumption in my reading and review of the first book. I was under the impression that this was a reverse harem romantasy, but I now believe it is a single relationship between Morgan and Zahak.

I mentioned in my last review that the character behind the unknown voice was revealed in the final pages. I had expected (and I’m 54% through as I write this) that they would be more of a presence in the plot. They have remained, thus far, sort of an external threat rather than an immediate one and have been quite absent in the pages. I also mentioned before how much I was enjoying the world-building of the first book, but I felt that this lost momentum in the second half of this book. It became too half-baked, like the reasons behind the plot decisions hadn’t been fully formed or more deeply thought out. It read as both too many plot lines and also an easy way out at the same time. I know that’s contradictory, but that is the only way I can explain it.

I feel disappointed, like I was cheated out of a possible epic storyline. The first book held so much promise. This second, final book was so lacking. It reminded me of the stories I used to write as a child. The stories that were overly saturated with plot points that they made little sense and with characters that were lucky to survive till the end. This is a total 180 for me. Usually, it is further in a series that I tend to fall in love with it. I don’t know whether the fact that this was a duo book series can be blamed, and I think it goes beyond the writing. It was just poor. And that’s okay, it wasn’t the book for me.

The relationship between Morgan and Zahak spoke of many chapters of growth and development, but in reality, they went from Morgan not believing in their bond to saying ‘I love you’ in such a short time that it made it unbelievable. There is an art to fantasy/supernatural romantasy novels, and this one didn’t have it. I feel more than disappointed, I feel frustrated that something with so much promise failed so spectacularly, it makes me mad for the characters because they deserved much more.

The battle that takes place in this book was predictable. I sussed out how it would go early on in the book, and I was correct in all my theories. It put me off balance because, yes, to a certain degree, we all want our book theories to be the correct ones, but because it was so easy and took little effort, my enjoyment in being correct was completely lost. I almost feel the way I do when I watch a film adaptation of a book that doesn’t match up.

The first book was a 4/5 for me, and now I’m second-guessing myself and wondering if I was too kind in my initial reaction. This was not it for me, and I’m bummed.