I can speak to demons. The punishment is death.The mission: put on a dress, pretend to be a lady, and infiltrate the academy of mages to steal a journal from the forbidden archives.The problem: I’m no mage and I’ve never worn a dress in my life.But it’s not like I have a choice. My bastard of an uncle basically sold me to a dangerously pretty nobleman, and they can’t pull off this heist without … uncle basically sold me to a dangerously pretty nobleman, and they can’t pull off this heist without me. Unfortunately, once I fake my way through the entrance exam with a piece of hacked mage tech, and reach the floating kingdom of Reverie, my problems are only just beginning.
Keeping my secret identity is hard enough without a suspicious prince following me around, and the jealous rich girl who wants to marry him threatening me at every turn. But I know I’m in real trouble when my magic sword starts to talk to me. If I can survive the demon attacks, the backstabbing nobles, and the piles of homework long enough, I may discover the source of magic… and if the truth gets out, it will shatter everything.
The Academy of Falling Kingdoms series is a young adult fantasy adventure full of monsters, murder and romantic intrigue. Fans who enjoyed Rachel Carter’s Black Mage series and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy will love this sprawling magic academy!
What reviewers are saying:
“OH MY GOD. I cannot rave enough about this book. It was PHENOMENAL!!! What a roller-coaster of emotions!” ★★★★★
“This book had me enchanted from page one. I love all the twists and turns. Everyone has a hidden agenda. And nothing is at seems on the floating city.” ★★★★★
“Action, mystery, danger, and adventure with a touch of romance. Some great twists and an amazing ending. I can’t wait to read what happens next.” ★★★★★
“WOW! Be prepared to stay reading once you start! Wonderful plot, interesting characters, and the setting is literally magical! Absolutely loved this book!” ★★★★★
BOOKS INCLUDED IN THIS SERIES
Book 1: The Source of Magic
“A roller-coaster of emotions.”
“I turned each page with breathless anticipation.”
Book 2: The Secret of Magic
“The characters are poignant and the story never fails.”
“More twists and turns in this book than I thought possible.”
Book 3: The Scourge of Magic
“Nothing about this series is disappointing.”
“Exciting, intense, imaginative. I could not put it down.”
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Wow this book just hooks you. Good plot, well made characters, action, mystery, twisted and magical.
I would have given it 5 stars but there were a few errors and if it had been longer it could have been more. Still an amazing read that is heartfelt and heartbreaking at times and keeps you interested.
The Falling Kingdoms series boxset by Maisa Mills and Drake Mason
This was a really great trilogy with amazing characters and detail. I found myself glued to the pages the farther into the story I read!
Recommended for any fans of magic, mystery and non stop action!!
These 3 books are amazing I really enjoyed listening to them I got these 3 books on audible n fell in live with the books. I didn’t want to put them down. The books were so captivating and so interesting I was always left wondering what is going to happen next and the last book was absolutely perfect.
This series feels like a sleeper hit just waiting for a final round of editorial polish. 5 stars for how much I loved it, 4 because… Well, it’s not 100% cooked yet and that frustrated me a little considering how good it could be. 4.5?
I’m the kind of reader who sniffs at excessive comma usage and continuity bugs, but I loved the story and characters so much it didn’t deter me. If that sounds like faint praise it’s not meant to; I really think that if you like a good young adult fantasy that takes all the tropes and plays all the right notes with them, then this is a series well worth your time.
We follow a girl named Wynter who lives in the slum-like Scraps beneath the floating mage-city of Reverie. Under the thumb of her cruel uncle, she and her friends scavenge for salvageable magical artefacts amidst the trash and dream of escaping. When a mage from the city buys Wynter’s services in order get his hands on an item hidden away inside Reverie’s Academy for young mages, she’s drawn into a web of magical conspiracy and political manoeuvrings that go far deeper than she could possibly have envisioned. If posing as a student mage wasn’t hard enough what with her lack of magical ability, she has to face down snooty classmates, rude professors, and a sarcastic prince. Then come the earthquakes and the demon attacks. And to top it off? The demons are talking to her.
Take everything you want from a YA fantasy, chuck it in a blender, add a spritz of future-dystopia and a dash of paranormal/urban fantasy, then blitz. This series satisfied everything: action, coming-of-age drama, adventure, mystery, a light-touch romance, family feuds, court politics… I enjoyed the heck out of it.
Wynter is a strong enough heroine, with the mean girl Viviane and rude jock Prince Alex as her main foils. Side characters really get going by book 2, each of them with their own personal journeys whether they’re fellow students (like Jessa and Tatiana), professors (Gareth, Du Lac), the slum kids, and even the nobility. Foppish Dorian and his nasty sister get a great arc. The wonderful thing is everyone is far deeper personality-wise than you’d first think. I do wish we’d gotten to know the snarky Lucian a bit better sooner, but dang I grew to love him. It’s so rare to find a YA that has natural-sounding characters.
The plot is a combination of twists you’ll see a mile off (internally screaming at Wynter for missing the downright obvious – her main flaw being she doesn’t always see things she should) to ones you’ll be genuinely surprised by. Yes, there are some world building things that could have been more obvious rather than leaving it to inferences, but it eventually made sense. The pacing is great. It all came together in such an amazingly satisfying YA way.
Now that downside I mention: it’s obviously written by two authors. The writing style is pretty consistent, but the content presented quite a number of continuity bugs. Sometimes things were broken up mid-scene indicated by *** breaks, and in those seconds passing characters could flip from one way of speaking to another, forget something they’d just been told, or know something they couldn’t have known until the end of the next chapter. For example the transition from book one to book two, picking up the same scene moments later, was very jarring. This sort of thing tended to happen less in book three, but still did. Also for the easily triggered by excessive punctuation usage, the comma works very hard and semi-colons are sometimes in places they shouldn’t be.
Do not get me wrong, I really loved this series. But I honestly believe that if it had a thorough editorial review to check for typos and continuity oddities it would shine alongside traditional published young adult fantasy novels – I swear the story and these authors have got that much potential.
All in all, it’s a work of epic magical-mystery that was genuinely fun. I’d definitely keep an eye on these guys.
I really enjoyed these three books and reading them one after the other is great. No waiting for the next one to see what happened. In the first book, Wynter Wilcox was a scavenger, who along with her younger brother, Briar and her friend Sterling, worked for her abusive uncle looking for scraps of old mage items found in the lower realm. Her uncle decided to sell her services to a nobleman from the upper realms. She was to enter the mage academy as a student and find a journal for him and steal it. She finds that to some degree she can perform some magic. She has no idea if it natural or if it was because of the demon who inhabited her sword. As she was running out of time, she had to hope that she could pass the final tests, which would allow her to continue at the academy, thus giving her more time to finish her task.
In the second book, Although she saved the life of Prince Alexander when they fell from the floating city, Wynter is worried that he might tell his father and the academy that she was a fraud who also talks to demons. She had to go back to the academy and pretend that nothing was wrong, but demon attacks keep happening and people are starting to look at her because she was present at each attack. When things come to a head, her Wynter and her friends try to find out who is releasing demons and is therefore responsible for the attacks.
In the last book, with her uncle sent off to war with the neighboring city, Wynter must try and save her city with the help of her friends.