This book has been advertised as a young-adult Game of Thrones, a high fantasy replete with grit and backstabbing. It was a finalist for the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults award, and it’s quite popular, too—it’s a New York Times best seller with excellent ratings on Barnes and Noble’s website and goodreads.com. With its enigmatic cover, it looks like a great read for any fantasy lover.
Unfortunately, it’s anything but.
Falling Kingdoms was written under a pseudonym by paranormal fantasy author Michelle Rowen, author of several bestsellers. It’s set in a painfully stereotypical fantasy world with equally stereotypical magic whose laws are changed at least three times during the novel. All three of the titular falling kingdoms possess inanely flowery names for absolutely no reason and are defined by artificial cookie-cutter molds. There’s prosperous, perpetually sunny Auranos, poor and cloud-covered Paelsia and icy, totalitarian Limeros. All three kingdoms are apparently declining due to the lack of elementia, the name for magic in this universe. All of this is spelled out to the reader in clunky sentences that leave nothing to the imagination. There needs to be art in professional writing; the readers are intelligent enough to read between the lines. Ms. Rowen doesn’t seem to understand this, and the writing and dialogue is decidedly amateurish. The mythology of this story is all rattled off in a single monologue. A better writer would have scattered details throughout the story. At the very least, a better writer would have made sure the world building didn’t sound like something out of SparkNotes.
Falling Kingdoms has a mid-sized ensemble cast that is somehow more mediocre and one-dimensional than the rest of the novel. Auranian princess Cleo is stunningly beautiful (according to the internal monologues of at least half the cast) but appears to lack anything resembling common sense or intelligence. Her fiancé and general sleazeball, Aron, murders a Paelsian peasant at the beginning of the novel, which becomes the catalyst for the events of the story. Jonas is the brother of the aforementioned peasant who becomes hell-bent on revenge against Cleo for his brother’s murder. Why he doesn’t fixate on his brother’s murderer is unexplained. The worst of our protagonists is Magnus, son and heir-apparent to Limeros’ dictator. He fits the bad-boy stereotype to a T and in a misplaced attempt to add depth to his character the author saw fit to give him romantic feelings for his sister. The aforementioned sister is apparently as beautiful as Cleo and is a powerful sorceress.
These aren’t characters; they’re walking plot devices! Nothing they say or do is realistic, and the questionable relationship between Magnus and his sister only worsens the story. The separate storylines and their eventual resolution into one narrative aren’t very interesting and become a pain to wade through. In summary, the entire thing is generic and dull.
Any readers looking for a well-done high fantasy with political intrigue and multiple narratives should read the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher, which are the kind of novels Falling Kingdoms should have been.
I give this sorry excuse of a novel 1.5 out of 5 flames for existing and being coherent.
