Fun read, and I could see myself reading the sequels if the direction fits my taste better.

REZENSION [ 5 Sterne ] Titel: „Throne of the Fallen — Verführt“ Autor*in: Kerri Maniscalo Verlag: Piper [Werbung | ReziEx von @NetGalley] „Throne of the Fallen“ ist der Spin-Off zu der beliebten „Kingdom of the Wicked“-Reihe der Autorin Kerri Maniscalo. Es geht dabei um Envy, Fürst des Neids, und Miss Camilla Antonius, Künstlerin aus einem kleinen Dorf. Aufgrund eines tödlichen Spiels, bei dem Envy teilnimmt, treffen die beiden aufeinander. Der Fürst des Neids muss bei Camilla ein ganz bestimmtes Gemälde in Auftrag geben, um bei dem Spiel einen Zug voran zukommen. Da diese von einem mächtigen Lord. Erpresst wird, willigt sie ein. Was die beiden nicht wissen: dass Camillas Einwilligung sie ebenfalls zur Spielerin macht. Schon bald arbeiten die beiden als Team, wobei sie merken, dass nicht nur das Spiel sie aneinander bindet, sondern auch ihre Herzen… Angesprochen hat mich das Buch nicht wegen des Covers — das ist mir definitiv zu unruhig und überladen —, sondern aufgrund der Leseprobe. Trotz dass die Geschichte in der dritten Person geschrieben ist, haben mich die ersten Seiten sofort in den Bann gezogen. Der Schreibstil ist fesselnd, die Charaktere interessant und vielschichtig und die Handlung ist der WAHNSINN! Von Anfang bis Ende war es spannend; ich habe das Buch in kürzester Zeit gelesen, obgleich es sehr dick ist. Nie habe ich die Wendungen kommen sehen, immer hat mich die Autorin überrascht. Auch die Magiewelt habe ich total geliebt. Zwar habe ich die „Kingdom of the Wicked“-Reihe nicht gelesen, dennoch habe ich mich gut zurecht gefunden. Fest steht für mich: Ich muss unbedingt die eigentliche Trilogie lesen! Des weiteren wurde die Spannung auch durch den Spice-Anteil oben gehalten. Davon gibt es etwa ab der Hälfte des Buches viel — aber nicht zu viel! Das ist mir immer wichtig, da sonst oft die Handlung in den Hintergrund rutscht. Hier war das aber nicht so; der Autorin ist es richtig gut gelungen, die spicy Szenen einzubauen! Sowieso habe ich die Anziehung zwischen Envy und Camilla einfach nur GELIEBT! Zwischen den beiden sind die Funken nur so geflogen und verfolgen zu dürfen, wie die Beziehung zwischen den beiden immer weiter fortschreitet, war richtig fesselnd. Fazit: Obwohl die Geschichte in der dritten Person geschrieben ist, kann ich gar nicht anders, als fünf Sterne zu vergeben! Das Buch hat alles, was einen guten Fantasy-Roman für mich ausmacht. Riesige Leseempfehlung!

Ich habe das Buch kaum zur Seite legen können. Ich fand, dass es eine ganz tolle Geschichte war. Das world-building und die Charakterentwicklung sind wirklich gut beschrieben. Der mittlere Teil hat sich etwas gezogen und das Ende war für den Rest der Story meiner Meinung nach etwas zu "rosarot", weshalb ich nicht die vollen fünf Sterne vergeben habe. Der Schreibstil und die Plots sind trotzdem genial. Für jemanden, der ein alleinstehendes Buch aus der Romantsy sucht jedenfalls genau das richtige. Gerade Acotar und Tribute von Parmem Fans werden hier auf ihre Kosten kommen. Klare Leseempfehlung 👍

2/10 average book with no redeeming qualities but many and major flaws which drag the rating down. I did not like this book. It's very difficult to rate this one… I do recognize that it simply isn't my genre and it feels unfair to be as harsh as I usually am. What also makes it hard, is that I've never rated a book this low that I didn't hate. Because while I disliked this book, I do not hold particular feelings towards, I'm actually quite indifferent to it. Usually I get very emotional over my dislike, which I didn't here…. However I still have many, many things to critique. Overall the book simply didn't give me anything… and then continued on doing some things badly, which dragged my rating down quite a bit. To me the book committed the cardinal sin of being boring. The worst thing a book can do is bore you. Then you can't even hateread it. <spoiler> Characters I don't hate or dislike any of the characters but I also don't like them. Envy is basically a shadow daddy without the shadows. The broody, dark and super handsome villainesque MMC. He's actually not even that evil or sinful, he just acts very brazenly and shameless. What I do hate a lot about him though is how he addresses Camilla. He calls her “pet”. *barf* I don't think I need to explain. Then he also uses “little” to describe her body, e.g. “little bottom”. Another thing I disliked about him is how obsessed he is with his massive, enormous, gigantic, magical cock. He even has a nude picture of him hanging over his bed. At any chance he gets he will mention how big his cock is and that no woman could ever forget it. He has the biggest one out of his brothers, etc etc. This is annoying and disgusting but overall he isn't that bad. I just don't care about him. Camilla is a bit more mixed for me. She has some good sides but it took me a while to get accustomed to her. In the beginning she was being a bit nonsensical to me quite a few times. Like when she falls on Envy when they're in Vexley's bedroom she assumes he thinks touching her is repulsive because he didn't make a move on her? Why? She had been pushing him away the entire time while had been approaching her and flirting with her and he even got a boner just because she fell on him!!! Girl, what do you want? Him to sexually assault you? Then she is forced to reveal her secret house to him and she is understandably upset over that because she barely knows Envy. But the next thing she does is lead him into said house and proceed to tell him there's a secret tunnel to her home, show him how to find it and then take him with her??? Girl I thought you didn't like him even knowing about the secret house. But these are the only two instances where she acts like that, afterwards she is okay. I do like that she is very proactive in bed. Overall I simply missed depth for the two MCs. They were just there and I didn't care about them and their lives. The sidecharacters are also only meh. It's disappointing that Kitty, the supposed best friend of Camilla, is barely important in any way. She also doesn't get much time on page. After the first part she's barely spared a thought. The villain characters are pretty meh too. Good villains are either charming or sympathetic. Vexley is a cartoonish misogynist who reappears again and again to disturb and assault Camilla. Lennox is just the big bad villain. Usually I wouldn't care about one-sided villains. They're not good but not necessarily bad either. This is the case for Lennox, but with Vexley i feel differently. Because he reappears so often I got quite annoyed by him bc why bro, just go chill. Just leave her alone. Relationships Sadly I do not get Camilla and Envy's relationship AT ALL. It's very insta-lust and insta-love so if you don't mind that, this might be for you. Me personally, I need build up for a relationship and this sadly didn't have any. Camilla masturbates in a carriage after her first meeting with Envy, 40 pages into the book. They lust after each other from the first moment onward and I simply never understood why. Because, to be frank, if vexley is supposedly also objectively handsome why doesn't Camilla masturbate to him too…? Yes, I know vexley sucks, but it's not like Envy was nice on their first meeting either…. Going further evey single interaction Camilla and Envy have with each other is laced with sexual innuendos, flirtations and them doing some sexual activity. In itself that's not necessarily a bad thing but I happens right from the start with no build up so that I never understood why they had the hots for each other and very quickly got bored of it. At some point their relationship obviously progresses from lust to love but that also happens without any buildup and is much telling and now showing. And since they never interact with each other being horny they never get emotional development in their relationship. They just love each other, I guess. Why? No idea. When? No idea either. So neither the lust nor the love were understandable to me and as such I also didn't like them. This is esp disappointing because I like the concept of jealousy and I think it gives good romantic scenes if done well. Given that Envy IS jealousy (personally I think envy and jealousy are two different things but I accept this iteration of the sin) i should've loved it. But I didn't, because every jealousy scene is based on physical attraction that is unfounded. I don't even think they're particularly a bad couple, just not a good one either. And because this is such a major part in this book it sucks. Worldbuilding This is set in a earth-based fantasy world where the human world is set somewhere around the regency era, somewhere after the 1500s but it's never really clarified. Generally I found the setting to be confusing and not as clear as I'd like it to be. At first I thought this was a regency inspired fantasy world, because magic is basically an open secret and the country doesn't exist but then suddenly there were clear earth-history references like food being “a la francaise” or the word “aficionada” or references to an earthly artist. I found this to be very off-putting because I really thought this was NOT on earth and it took me a while to understand the setting. Personally I need such a thing to be clear. Especially since it's a historical setting, which is used quite often in not-earth fantasy. This provided a bit of confusion and annoyance for me but isn't that important. What bothered me more was the lack of worldbuilding for the underworld. I know this is a sequel series, but as it's marketed as being readable independently I do expect adequate worldbuilding. That this is an Italy inspired world is something I only learned from reading reviews. The book didn't explain that (aside from the map). My main problem is that the characters barely move from place to place, they *teleport*. Which means all the places are very independent from each other and don't share any connections. I literally have no idea how the underworld looks or how its population lives. Hell, what even the population is. The places we visite are The sin corridor House Envy House sloth House wrath Malice island Unseelie court The only two places with landscape descriptions are the corridor and malice island with its beach. And then again we barely get to see how the populace lives or what kinds of creatures live there. What are demons? The only demons we really meet are sick. Are they like underworld humans? Do they look differently? What's special about them? What is their relationship to the sin princes? The places we visit are also largely buildings or places attached to them, like the twin pillars in the cave under house wrath. Personally I find such a worldbuilding to be very lackluster and I can't immerse myself into its world. One thing that also made little sense to me is actually quite important: if the Fae couldn't go to the mortal realm, which is the main motivation for Lennox, then how do Wolf and Kitty just waltz around between them like it's no big deal? Plot Plot? What plot? There is an extra category for the “plot” lager on. Generally it wasn't that important to me and bored me a little… Like the game is explained so little and isn't that big of a part of the plot. It is a driving force yes, because it's what moves the plot forward, but it's not like the different riddles are a plotpoint itself. They're more like the framework for the plot. Like i said the game wasn't delved into enough. The riddles were also a bit lackluster, because they ALL included anagrams. Which are cool! But not for every single one of them. After the first time I wasn't intrigued anymore how they would solve the riddles or just the intricacies of the game. I also wonder how the game even works. In the end it appears as if Lennox didn't even have to give Envy his prize, which would make him playing so fucking idiotic. Having no guarantee on it and then playing around is crazy. I just don't understand why Envy didn't try to steal the chalice himself or by sending spies or why he didn't wager war on Lennox when he was still stronger. There must have been other options. I would be fine with him playing the games if it meant he really 100 % got the prize because that explains the commitment he has in them but like this… just a bit weird. Overall the plot simply didn't catch me. My interest was never piqued and i never had a strong desire to continue on reading. I probably wouldn't even have finished this or would've taken way longer to read it if it hadn't been a bookclub book. Pacing/tension This could've been an email vibe…. The book was just soooo long for how little happened. The first part in Waverly green was also so unnecessary in hindsight. Practically no relationship or place that we are introduced to in that part plays any part in the rest of the book and the setting is so different from the underworld that it is just a massive waste of time. Why did I need to learn so much about Camillas home in Waverly green, that she has a secret house, that she has a best friend there, how the society works and what different places there are? None of it has an impact on any of the characters or story. The most important thing is maybe vexley because he is a reoccurring villain but really? Like 150 pages for that? The book is already long enough. Two big things in the story were the mysteries around what was happening to Envy's court and what was Camilla's identity. Those two questions didn't interest me at all. I didn't care to solve them and I didn't care when we did find out the truth. Imho a problem is that the mystery isn't done intriguingly. We get half of the picture right from the start and also immediately know there's more to it. There was no tension in that. Right from the start we know that Envy has to play the game to save his court and that his courtiers are going crazy. And we very quickly get told that Camilla probably isn't human. Obviously I did wonder about why the courtiers were going crazy and what species Camilla was but the way it was built up took any tension out for me. Over the course of the story there is little left to wonder because everyone already tells you what is happening and everyone already knows it. Envy already suspects Camilla not being human and so do many others people. Envy himself tells us most of the court mystery. Only the minute details remain to unveiled and because of the buildup being bad i didn't care anymore then. I didn't care why Envy's court was going mad because I already knew his motivations and I didn't care about Camilla's species because I already knew she wasn't human and I didn't see why it would matter (on that later). I think what I needed here is the book making me, the reader, wonder about Camilla's identity. Drop clues and let me guess and think about it. Instead the characters did all the work for me and there was no moment where I as the reader was left to think about it. I don't know if this is really how I can put my issue into words. Usually I'm someone who loves guessing and trying to solve mysteries in books but here not at all… it lacked tension. I didn't sense urgency or importance in the mysteries. Writing No book that uses the words “male” and “female” as a noun could ever be 5 stars for me. No, it doesn't matter that they're not referring to humans. Just say human women, demon woman, etc etc like every normal fantasy author has done before the romantasy author. I am just particularity disgusted by this. Aside from that the writing was fine. It was easy to read. Most of my irks were during the smut scenes. Like i said “little bottom” Or “hardened”, “apex”, or the reoccurring addressing of Camilla as “the artist”. Generally many words were recycled over and over again, e.g. “deviant” or “cock” (i don't thing another word was used for it ever?). My favorite sentence “my cock - the diligent soldier it usually is” The vulgarity also was a problem for me. I hate this kind of vulgarity. Constant cock jokes are people being crass. I'm not prude by any means but don't like when books are vulgar, and by that I don't mean sexual. True to its genre there's also a lot of big cock glorification which I HATE. The biggest cock is the best cock, having a small one is so bad, magical cocks that ruin women, etc etc. Leave me alone with this shit. Now aside from this formal writing I want to get into the content writing. Some things were written weirdly. In the beginning Envy says he's glad he can lie now. But to the reader it was never established before that he wasn't able to? So I just shrugged and accepted that he was able to lie and that was special. The explanation for that is made like 200 pages after Envy said that. A smaller detail: In Camilla's first pov with Alexei she talks about him as if she already knew him. But the first time she meets Alexei is from Envy's pov and there is no introduction, she just catches him saying his name. This is not a major flaw or even an error, but it irks. I just prefer the subtlety in writing. Sentences like “the man, Alexei, I think he was called” that reflect that the character doesn't know the other and that they just recently discovered their name. But this is just a small thing that represents my overall dislike in the writing, because the subtlety simply is amiss overall. Another weird scene is when Camilla exclaims how her father will die if Envy kills Vexley…. Only to immediately be dropped because “ah no, i meant metaphorically”. Why would you even say that then?? And what a weird way to build up tension. It also makes Camilla's motivation really confusing. So like, the pretty much first thing we learn about her goals is that she wants to get the painting back so that Vexley can't blackmail her anymore. But that makes no sense. Why would she try stealing the painting if he still had her ins hands? What the hell was her plan??? And why did Vexley not mention the key when he went to threaten her?? Regarding her identity as Fae and her magic powers, why did she not use them to defend herself against Lord Garrey? He was about to kill her!!! And to make it even more upsetting she never uses those powers ever again, they didn't need to there… It's also weird and not believable how Camilla randomly puts together that Envy made his one-night rule to punish himself. It's clear to the reader but not her, so I don't mind her getting that later. But why did she guess it when she did? It's not like she learned something new about Envy. It comes to her so randomly. Before Envy and Camilla sleep with each other Camilla confirms that she is Fae (does she not feel guilt over keeping the truth from envy?). So why does he not spare a thought over how she has none of those charm marks whatever on her body? He previously massaged her to check for those but suddenly he doesn't think it's weird that she is fae and yet doesn't have any marks on her? During the sex okay I guess, but not even afterwards? This is what would've created mystery!!! I also don't get why Abyssus let her go? It's not like she overpowered him. He suddenly went “oh yeah you may go” and oops a few days passed so that there's this random sense of urgency, which is then totally disrupted when Camilla decides she needs to hear the full story from Envy right before they solve the game, like?? Not the moment. Both for them as they need to HURRY but also the reader. That was the last moment in which I cared about the memory thing. Back to abyssus, if he let Camilla go because Lennox wanted that then why would he even keep her that long? It's just so weird. Camilla then has that locket that keeps Unseelie men away. Why only men? So random. And how does it even work?? I didn't see any man reacting to it. Wolf dances with her anyway and the guards can easily remove the locket. I decided to talk about the plottwist in this part because I think the writing is a problem for it. So, very close to the end we find out that Camilla is not only not human but also is a fae princess - the daughter of envy's enemy Lennox. That reveal was both unsurprising and unsatisfying. Of course her identity was only made such a big deal of because she was the enemy's daughter!! Because why else would it even matter???? It's so on the nose that it's annoying and it was not surprising at all, even if I didn't catch it before. I cannot imagine how it must have been for people that guessed at the start with how much the characters were dancing around the mystery. That's the thing: it was written so weirdly. I love the idea of a character keeping secrets from the reader, but I hated the execution here. Like I already explained, I didn't care about it! And it didn't even feel as if Camilla was keeping secrets from the reader. It's not easy to write a character in whose POV you're in keeping secrets from the audience so I get that this is hard. I respect that the author tried it, even if I didn't dislike the execution. While it's clear that this wasn't retconned and that the author had this planned from the beginning and there are scenes where you can see that Camilla reacts suspiciously, there are few of them. It's also her general behavior that doesn't represent that. There are no behaviors that are weird, like an aversion to iron, neither from Camilla's nor Envy's pov. Camilla doesn't think about the secret she is keeping or even that she has one. Envy never senses guilt or other suspicious emotions from her during their normal interactions. Like when he tells her that Lennox is the Gamemaster she grows silent but what does she feel? Shock? No. If you give your character emotion sense abilities you can't just turn them on and off whenever it's convenient!!! Then another time when they talk about his hatred towards Lennox (in Camilla's pov!) Camilla just thinks that “the Unseelie king” must have done something terrible. No recognition. I get that she won't think “wow, that's my dad” but a simple “he” would suffice to indicate she knows him. Again, the subtlety in writing. I would've much preferred if this hadn't been made a mystery and instead we would've gotten to see Camilla's inner life and emotions about tricking Envy. Knowing in her Pov what is going on and then Envy being confused at the feelings she has and making wrong guesses. I would've loved that. Smut This needs its own section because the plot is the smut. Literally, it's all that happens. First I want to say that I appreciate how proactive Camilla was during their sexual encounters. Aside from that I simply didn't enjoy any of the sex scenes. They weren't necessarily bad but also not good. Like I explained before I didn't enjoy the sexual tension and it simply was all too fast for me. The way it was drawn out so long until they finally did penetrative sex was sooo annoying. It was just 24/7 cockblocking. When it finally happened I wasn't even intrigued, i was just glad it wasn't a plotpoint anymore. It was also such a bad moment to do it. Envy!!! Didn't you care so much about your court?? Why are you ignoring the next clue when your courtiers could be dying in this exact moment??? Also uhmmm.. I won't go deep into this but the similarities to the ACOTAR series…. Literally the two last sex scenes are from that and they're in the same chapter!!!! Laughed out so hard at that point. </spoiler> I would not recommend this book. It has shallow worldbuilding, lackluster characters and its plot is mostly average smut. I won't be reading more from this author.

What the fuck kind of magic was in this book?