I have a few complaints about this book, and this series as a whole. Sorry it's a long rant...there is a TL; DR at the bottom.

Complaint 1:

Apparently, if you don't read EVERY SINGLE BOOK in the Fae Chronicles universe, and these books are not listed as being Fae Chronicles - The books in Wicked Knights, The Elite Guards, and Playing with Monsters, you will find yourself lost. Amelia only lets her readers know about this in the blurb of THIS book, and it is only here that you find out that you need to read EVERY book in the universe and not just "The Fae Chronicles".

I thought I was a fan of the series, I have read just about every book, but I kind of stopped reading the "side "books around "The Winter Court" when I realized Amelia started substituting dirty talk and sex scenes with story and plotline. So, when I noticed that I was getting lost on obscure plot points that kept being brought up - Adam making off with a corpse being one of them, and characters were being brought in as if they have always been around, I had to literally open up books and do a search on character names and plot terms to figure it out.

I wonder how many readers made this discovery? How many readers stopped following the side stories and just waited around to read "The Fae Chronicles" and are woefully lost, not understanding that they needed to read the other books. Perhaps a companion novella or even a list of characters in the book would be helpful.

Complaint 2:

Characters we loved in 2014 and 2015 have become parodies of themselves in 2020. Ryder and Cyn, in the first four books had a life outside of each other, and were fairly well rounded. In an abstract vision in my mind, I see Ryder and Cyn in the first four books as being well-fleshed out characters in full color, now they are one dimensional. It's as if Amelia stopped writing about them as characters and just started writing them as props to forward sex scenes and conflict. Even the banter I loved in the past is gone. Also, characters we loved who are major secondaries have been given practically no time. Rystan is one of them. While the main characters of every side book are brought out front and center. All the heroines of the previous books are here as if they have always been around. There are obscure characters being trotted out and apparently, we are just dumbasses for not already knowing who they are. Inside jokes and plot points are the rule here.

I am so disappointed. I hate that I have to skim past pages and pages of tedious sex scenes to get to some plot which more often than not is contrived conflict. In this book all we have is Cyn trying to assert herself as a badass who won't be told to sit aside and play "The Queen" while Ryder spends the book barking at her to shed her humanity and do what he says. The only time they don't seem to fight is when they have sex - which is in most chapters and is pages long and filled with so much over the top dirty talk that it's cringy.

Amelia learned that the readers of her books enjoyed Ryder's dirty talk at Cyn. So, she figured that more is better. So now in every scene involving Ryder talking to Cyn (not including sad scenes) he is either threatening her sexually with dirty talk, or having sex with her and also dirty talking.

The reason why we loved it in the first couple of books is because there was sexual tension between Ryder and Cyn. The dirty talk amped up the tension. Sex wasn't introduced until the second book and it wasn't until halfway through. It wasn't every other chapter thing. Ryder and Cyn weren't just waiting around on each other to have sex or kick ass, but that is what is going on here.

I know this is the first half of the last part of the series, but that doesn't mean Ryder and Cyn have to be made to go through tedious tropes best left for the first book. The old "I thought you were cheating on me, but you were really faking it to draw in some villain" contrived conflict. An asinine plot point when Ryder cheats on Cyn. She catches him in the feeding chambers getting his freak and feed on with some random. Of course, Cyn is heartbroken. What she and the reader don't know is that Ryder isn't actually the one she sees, no, it's Ryder's shapeshifting brother trying to draw out some baddie who is secretly being lured in. Cyn wasn't supposed to know the truth because of that old chestnut - realism. Of course, she needed to truly feel cheated on because how could she not fake it. And this was apparently the ONLY way Ryder could flush out the bad guy. This was weak sauce.

Whatever.

So, to sum up - I am tired of being lost because I didn't read three books out of the 15 books in this unadvertised universe. I am tired of actual plot, banter and dialogue being replaced with sex and cringy dirty talk, and I am tired of Cyn and Ryder and friends being distilled into one dimensional character.

Unfortunately, I have to go back and reread books I didn't really care for, or read books that I had skipped because I am lost to various plot points.

If you are following the series and have read the majority of the books, you kind of have to read this one. It ends on a major cliffy - yet another contrived conflict - the amnesiac. Yup.

Oh, I almost forgot, this is a space between paragraphs book, so the page count is padded and it is annoying to read. I actually download the book and edit it for those paragraphs and resend it to my Kindle. I do pay for it on Amazon, but I edit it so I can actually read it. Why authors still do that I don't know, but it is a terrible formatting style.

2021 Second Read

Well, I admit that I liked this book better the second time around after reading all the previous books in order up to it. I think that because I hadn't read some of the previous books, and because I hadn't re-read the previous Fae Chronicles this book came off badly. I liked it much better this time. ( )