My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Title: Shadow Fall (Shadow Fall, #1)
The asteroid hurtling toward the earth will kill billions.
The Emperor and his Gold Court will be safe in their space station, watching from the stars. The Silvers will be protected underground. But the Bronzes must fight it out at the Shadow Trials for the few remaining spots left on the space station.
When an enigmatic benefactor hands Maia Graystone a spot in the Trials, she won’t just get a chance at salvation for her and her baby brother, Max: She gets to confront the mother who abandoned her in prison, the mad Emperor who murdered her father, and the Gold prince who once loved her. But it’s the dark bastard prince she’s partnered with that will make her question everything, including her own heart. With the asteroid racing closer every day, Maia must trust someone to survive.
The question is who?
Author: Audrey Grey
Format: Kindle Unlimited
Pages: 368
Categories: Dystopia, Sci-Fi, Romance
- Love the world building in this series – sci-fi is hard for me to get into but I found this world fascinating. Pandora is an asteroid that is coming close to Earth and will wipe out almost all of the Earth. There must be a way to stop it. There is, and the key is hiding in Maia, where her father put it. But what is the key? How can it stop Pandora? Along with the mission to stop Pandora is the political conflict happening with the Emperor who has safe haven along with other wealthy people in the empire, the Golds. The empire is categorized into Golds, Silvers and Bronze.
- This book one is gritty and I like it that way because it has really shaped Maia’s personality and her tenacity to survive. Maia is living in the Pit and it’s a scary place! She’s alone, she’s dirty and hungry, she at the lowest point of her life. There is another boy here she meets that will be tied into her future, Riser, a Pit boy with a secretive past. They both get reconstructed into different looking people to go on a mission to enter the Shadow Trials.
- I like her growing relationship with Riser. They both saw each other at their absolutely low point in their lives and together they change, grow, and feelings are growing..but are they real or manufactured?
- And then again…the love triangle or tease of one. Just…sigh, it’s gonna be Riser. Caspian is nice and all and so their DNA matches or something, it will be Riser. But I think this author’s likes the love triangle thing in her series.
- Now I’ve read this author’s Kingdom of Runes series and it has so much ACOTAR vibes…well this series started giving me Maze Runner, Secondborn and Hunger Games vibes! So…I can definitely see her influences in her stories.
- Triggers: violence, torture, phobias
My Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Title: Shadow Rise (Shadow Fall, #2)
Terrorist. Rebel. Traitor.
One rash decision during the Shadow Trials led to unspeakable horrors that left innocents dead, friends injured and hunted by the Empire, and Maia Graystone imprisoned in the Tower at the Archduchess’s mercy.
Unsure if Riser Thornbrook survived, Maia must find a way to battle the Empire from within its own walls and escape so she can fulfill the promise to her father and stop the asteroid. But when she breaks free and joins Nicolai’s Rebel army, she discovers she’s been branded a traitor. With war between the Rebels and the Empire looming, old alliances shifting, and suspicion hanging over her head, she must fight in the Rebel Blood Courts—and win command—to regain their trust.
Only problem is, first she has to defeat the reigning champion, someone she knows all too well. Will Maia’s emotions lead to her defeat, or will she rise up and claim her victory?
Author: Audrey Grey
Format: eBook (Kindle Unlimited)
Pages: 312
Categories: Sci-Fi, Romance, Dystopia
- Maia…at times I wanted to shake her. The author I think likes making her female leads headstrong to the point of making so many mistakes because she doesn’t think she needs help. She feels betrayed by Riser because he cut his memory of her out of his mind (I mean the guy was killed how many times because of her 🤦🏻♀️). But Maia is a survivor, I’ll give her that.
- Riser – he doesn’t remember her but she still gets under his skin. And I love him for that. He’s a good one who’s had a really bad past. His story and Maia’s brings so much emotion to this series, they have to overcome so much. And they are good for one another, once they start trusting each other.
- Maia is reunited with her brother in this one but it’s a struggle for them to open up and bond. There has been so much hurt in their lives with their father dying, them struggling being apart or thinking each other was dead and then their mother and her role with the Emperor.
- In this book Maia is in the rebel camp so we meet more characters, I love Lash and Teagan. We learn more about Nicolai the leader of the rebels. There is still a lot of action in this one which moves the story quickly.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Title: Shadow Ruin (Shadow Fall, #3)
My name is Maia Graystone: soldier, commander of the rebel army . . . and the Emperor’s worst nightmare.
After going from scorned traitor to leader of the rebel army overnight, I’m now the most powerful girl in the empire.
But power always comes with a price.
My mother questions my position at every turn, my enemies wait for the right moment to strike, and the burden of leadership threatens my relationship with Riser.
When the Empire kidnaps someone I love, I’m faced with the impossible—sneak onto Hyperion, the Emperor’s highly-guarded palace in the sky.
I’ve survived the Shadow Trials. I’ve survived the violent Blood Courts. But surviving this final mission means deciding once and for all who to trust—the golden prince from my past or the dark soldier from my future.
With Pandora’s wrath only days away, I’ll enter one final twisted game of treachery, secrets, and deceit.
Winner takes all . . . let the games begin.
Author: Audrey Grey
Format: eBook (Kindle Unlimited)
Pages: 316
Categories: Dystopian, Sci-Fi, Romance
- This was the first Audrey Grey series I started and in between finishing the first two books and this last installment, I read two of her other series. Kingdom of Runes was entertaining even if it was too similar to ACOTAR and her Evermore Academy fell flat for me but this Shadow Fall series is my favorite out of all of them maybe because I already read so much fantasy that this sci-fi story stood out more. And this story has so much more emotion because it starts off so dark, which is fantastic. It could only go up from there and it did.
- Maia Graystone has gone through hell and back. She’s leading a rebellion with her best friends at her side. But now that her mother is fighting along side her, Maia can’t help feel inadequate. So Maia questions herself a lot. She has to learn to be a leader and at least we get to see her try her best at it. I like that she’s a heroine in which nothing has comes easy. She’s gone through it all.
- Riser – I love him and his loyalty. So yeah the whole love triangle thing that Maia finds herself annoyed me. It’s all about Riser! But haha, she had to find it out all in her own confusing way. Yeah it’s not fair that she and Caspian were genetically constructed to be each other’s “match” for life. But…it was always going to be Riser.
- I LOVE Lash and Teagan so much. They brought the humor and friendship to Maia’s life. Maia had been alone since separated from her mother and brother, so having made friends with Lash and Teagan ugh…that was the best. I was worried for them until the end.
- I think the loose ends in this series was tied up nicely and sadly 🥺. The ending is bittersweet and it made me emotional. I really enjoyed this gritty dystopian world with a heroine who has to stop an asteroid nearing Earth plus help take down a madman Emperor who keeps the people divided by class and color. The twists were good, although sometimes with sci-fi concepts I can’t visualize them fully like I do works of fantasy. I love Riser and his loyalty to Maia. They are all so complicated – down to Maia’s mother, who comes off so so evil…but in the end she does what she has to.
TRIGGERS: torture, death, violence
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