The Echo of Things to Come delivers everything I love about epic fantasy while expanding the scale and complexity of the world in a really satisfying way. The story feels bigger, darker and more intricate than the first book, with political tension, moral ambiguity and time-bending mysteries constantly raising the stakes. What stood out the most is how the character arcs deepen. Everyone is pushed into harder choices and uncomfortable truths. The pacing can feel demanding at times because the book juggles multiple timelines and perspectives, but the payoff is worth it. The final stretch in particular is intense and full of twists that completely reframe earlier events. It's the kind of cliffhanger that makes you immediately want the next book while also needing time to process what just happened. An ambitious, complex sequel that expands the world, raises the emotional stakes and sets up the finale brilliantly.

The Sins of Silas was a bingeable read for me. The pacing is fast, the drama is high and the story constantly keeps the tension moving forward. The romance is intense and emotional, but at times it leaned too heavily into drama and unnecessary suffering. Instead of feeling cathartic, some of the conflict started to feel excessive, which made parts of the relationship harder to fully connect with. My biggest struggle was the handling of trauma. Once again, the characters go through heavy, life-altering events, but the long-term emotional consequences feel rushed or softened too quickly. The pain is present in the moment, yet it rarely lingers in a way that feels fully explored. Because of that, some of the emotional payoffs did not hit as hard as they could have. I finished the book wishing the emotional aftermath had been given more space and that the drama had been more balanced. I also found the major twists fairly predictable and ended up correctly guessing most of the big reveals.

I devoured this book in record time, which speaks to how addictive the story is. The Lies of Lena is a fast-paced fantasy romance with a forbidden love story that kept me hooked from start to finish. It's not particularly complex or literary, but it doesn't need to be, it's an entertaining story that keeps you turning pages. I'm invested in seeing where this series goes.

With that said, this book has one major problem. The FMC experiences a very serious traumatic event and what bothers me isn't that it happened (I don't mind graphic scenes if they're necessary for the plot), but how it is handled. After the immediate aftermath, Lena essentially... moves on. There's minimal processing, no lasting psychological impact shown, no triggers or ongoing struggle with what happened. She's back to living her life and functioning as if nothing occurred. This kind of trauma doesn't just disappear with physical healing and revenge, and treating it so superficially felt dismissive, unrealistic and even problematic. Word of advice, check your trigger warnings before reading.

On the surface, Mother of Death and Dawn is a fantasy about war, ancient magic, and the cost of power. But underneath, it is a meditation on grief: on what we do with it, what it does to us, and whether love is ever reason enough to burn the world down. The answer the book arrives at is neither simple nor clean, which is precisely why it satisfies. A quietly devastating book. The kind that changes the shape of what you expect from the genre.