The House of Shattered Wings
Multi-award winning author Aliette de Bodard, brings her story of the War in Heaven to Paris, igniting the City of Light in a fantasy of divine power and deep conspiracy…
In the late twentieth century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins, the aftermath of a Great War between arcane powers. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.
Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.
Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation—or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.
The House of Binding Thorns
The multi-award-winning author of The House of Shattered Wings continues her Dominion of the Fallen saga as Paris endures the aftermath of a devastating arcane war….
As the city rebuilds from the onslaught of sorcery that nearly destroyed it, the great Houses of Paris, ruled by Fallen angels, still contest one another for control over the capital.
House Silverspires was once the most powerful, but just as it sought to rise again, an ancient evil brought it low. Phillippe, an immortal who escaped the carnage, has a singular goal—to resurrect someone he lost. But the cost of such magic might be more than he can bear.
In House Hawthorn, Madeleine the alchemist has had her addiction to angel essence savagely broken. Struggling to live on, she is forced on a perilous diplomatic mission to the underwater dragon kingdom—and finds herself in the midst of intrigues that have already caused one previous emissary to mysteriously disappear….
As the Houses seek a peace more devastating than war, those caught between new fears and old hatreds must find strength—or fall prey to a magic that seeks to bind all to its will.
The House of Sundering Flames
The white-hot conclusion to the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy by the multi-award-winning author…
The Great Houses of Paris—headed by Fallen angels and magicians—have co-existed in fragile peace. When a powerful explosion razes House Harrier, old alliances are torn apart and a race begins to fill the power void.
Thuan, the beleaguered dragon head of House Hawthorn, finds a war on his doorstep. Aurore, once cast out by Harrier and almost beaten to death, seeks power to protect her family—and must venture back to her former home. And, in the ruins of House Harrier, Emmanuelle desperately tries to piece her fragmented memories of the explosion.
But beneath House Harrier awaits a fiery magic that hungers for destruction. And it is time for Houses and Houseless to stand together—or be engulfed in flames…
My Take
Not gonna lie, it was a struggle to get through the first book. I found two of the main characters so whiny and hopeless that I almost didn’t want to hear anything more from them. Still, I was curious enough about what happened next that I was chagrined when I realized on the flight home from Paris that I hadn’t downloaded the second book.
I found the second and third books less depressing, though they’re certainly not light-hearted romps. The characters were less hopeless overall and the setting of a devastated Paris was atmospheric. The conflicting and competing magic systems were also interesting. Coincidentally, another book I read recently (The Chosen and the Beautiful) also has a Vietnamese character and another series has a character named Asmodeus, and they’re very different.