I wanted to love Heir of Prophecy, but it just wasn’t for me unfortunately. Partly the drop, comes too soon and I had a difficult time connecting to the world. Keep reading this book review of Heir of Prophecy for my full thoughts.
Summary
She’s a woman bound by fate, torn between two prophecies.
He’s the Prince of the underworld, fated to either claim her or end her life.
Defying destiny is one thing…the heart, another.
Magic has always been at the periphery of Audra’s life. As a human, she knows that magic exists, but it’s as distant as the legends she grew up with. Until one day, magic returns, bringing with it the all too real Fae and upending Audra’s life entirely.
Abducted by a cult of fae Priestesses, Audra finds herself conscripted into a magical war academy. The only hope of surviving this new world filled with guilds, magic, and danger is to band together with a group of her fellow prisoners. Though unlike the others, Audra’s burgeoning magic is erratic and violent—just as the prophecy foretold. She must discover what it means to be the Heir, but time is running out. The Priestesses know the Heir moves among them, and they’re determined to root them out, no matter what it takes.
As she struggles to mask her power, Audra’s plagued by visions of a dark, seductive being with a conflicting truth. He doesn’t want to save the world; he plans to reclaim it.
Now, Audra must choose: become the savior the cult demands or the catalyst the vision promises.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
For me, if you’re going to have a reversal of magic, of something which should never happen, and you don’t set it up soon enough or strong enough, when the drop happens it rings hollow. If we don’t know yet enough about the world, we don’t feel that same sense of betrayal or shock when the world turns out to be something else. And so in Heir of Prophecy, we feel this drop, this reversal so early on that it doesn’t even seem that shocking? And for me, when so much of the plot revolves around it, it makes it hard to feel the stakes. There’s so much of the world to take in when we “realize” it’s more than we thought, that it feels like whiplash.
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Additionally, the early multiple perspective shifts make it even harder to get a handle on what’s happening. It’s this weird balance of the pacing feeling slow, but also there being so much information on the world front that it feels like just a lot of information. It’s also another situation that I’ve been experiencing lately where the character ‘cares and loves’ their family and it’s used as a motivation factor, but feels more like a telling versus showing. For me, this just wasn’t for me. Once the elements come together, it does get more cohesive around the halfway mark, but for me if I was imagining myself as a reader not a reviewer, that’s a bit hard to promise.
Find Heir of Prophecy on Goodreads, Storygraph, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.