Reign of the Fallen – Sarah Glenn Marsh

Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glenn Marsh

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Reign of the Fallen throws readers into a world of magic where the color of your eyes can determine what magic you may have. That being said, the author tells us that very few are able (or willing) to study and become Masters in their respective crafts – so magic is a rare and powerful thing. The main character, Odessa is a necromancer: a person who can travel to another place to bring back the souls of the dead and return them to their bodies. The idea of the story and of necromancers is not quite your typical portrayal and I enjoyed that it was unique.

Although I liked the characters, I never felt that the emotional connections were forged well enough throughout the book to make me care as much about them as I would like. The biggest reason for me that this is an issue is because this book revolves around grief, loss, and coming to terms with yourself and your situation. Grief can be an incredibly powerful emotion and strike the reader to their core, but it just fell flat for me. The characters experience the death of an incredibly important character to them, but as readers, we hadn’t been given the opportunity to connect to that character before we lost them and so we couldn’t go on that journey together.

The pacing of the plot could have been better. There were times when I sped through the story, unable to put the book down, and others when I lost interest. I felt that there were moments that were superfluous or drawn out and slowed down the pacing of the story unnecessarily. The grief scenes, which could have been so poignant, were just dull. The plot just seemed to lack focus at times and spent too much time on scenes that weren’t needed in the book. Critically, I have a number of issues with the book, but just personally, overall, I really enjoyed the book and cannot wait to find out what happens in the sequel.

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