WHAT A FUCKING SERIES !!!! When i tell you this series was literally life changing for me, I'm not even joking. I think this is my new favourite series, as in on par / better than the folk of air and ACOTAR. The world building, magic system, romance, plot, writing style, dialogue, characters, everything was phenomenal !

✅ 📜“The first time as a refugee, a half-dead slave searching for someone to save her. The second time as a weapon, a slave to a new master ready to go fight someone else’s war. And now, at last, as a liberator.”📜

Yet again Tisaanah Vytezic was a brilliant character, she’s bad-ass, compassionate, caring and she never loses sight of her beliefs. She’s would do anything for her family and the people she cares about and i respect her sm. My heart really goes out to her at the beginning of this book, i really felt like i could understand her emotions during those hard times. She’s such a goddess <3

✅ 📜“A realization came to me, one that I had been grappling with for the last ten years. There was no single moment when everything changed. No single before and after. There was just… life. A million decisions and a million consequences.” 📜

Maxantarius Farlione is one of my favourite character ever, not just because he’s swoon worthy but he has soooo much more going for him than that. Even after everything he goes through and even with his faults he’s such a good man ( plus he’s fucking hilarious ). When he had amnesia i was so upset for him because he forgot what happened to his family and my heart was breaking that he couldn’t remember the last 10 years but he preserved and went with his instincts and saved himself ans helped tisaanah. I could truly talk about him forever.

✅ 📜“Together we turn to the door. Together we will cross it. Together we will conquer the next unknown. His hand reaches out for me. His lips curl into a sad smile. “Come home, Aefe,” he murmurs. I love how he says my name. I take his hand.” 📜

Aefe / Reshaye or however you want to say their name, i honestly felt so conflicted when it came to her. Part of me would love her and love following along her journey but then sometimes the things she did / thought i didn’t agree with at all. I did feel bad for her though because she really didn’t know who she was or how to act or how to feel properly because of what the did to her, even in her past life she struggled but her journey was heartbreaking </3 Im not sure i fully wanted her to have a happy ending just because some of the things she did were really out of order (primarily what she did to max) but i am glad her ending ended with her being content and resolved.

✅ THE MAGIC 📜“We Wielded the core of power like snatching a burning star from the sky.” 📜 in this book was literally so fucking extraordinary. It was easy to understand but also enchanting and mind bowing at the same time. The layers of magic are so beautiful to me and i think it’s a gorgeous way to imagine magic being. I truly was entranced by the magic but also so impressesed and sometimes disturbed by it (in the best way)

✅ THE PLOT 📜“This is either how the world ends, or how it begins”📜 omfg the plot, was it soul crushing for the first like 400 pages, yes, yes it was but it was worth it for the happiness i felt after it for better. Ngl the beginning of this book did take me a while to read because it was just SO depressing, like everything just kept going wrong and because i loved the characters so much it really did put me into a bit of a depression. But boy was it worth it !!! It was intense, fascinating and felt so real like their reactions were so believable. 📜“We all feel the same things, and we will still die trying to kill each other for it.” 📜

✅World building - I was obsessed with the world building in this book and how the different countries and characters were described. The way Ara, the shades and other disturbing images were described in this book truly shook me to my core and made my skin crawl (in the best way). But also it was so breathtaking to really be able to imagine the different aspects of this book.

✅ Side characters - I think the characters in this series were so well written and so well chosen

-Sammerin - love him sm, tbh the fact he was so stressed during this book is what scared me the most (iykyk). He’s such a refreshing character and really balances out the others

- Moth - my baby <3 i love / hate how much he’s grown over the series because ik he only developed that fast because he was forced into it

• -Brayan - tbh i felt really bad for him. You can tell he doesn’t know how to deal with his emotions and he struggles with his family’s deaths. I loved the fact he was in this because he helped us give Max a bit i’d closure that he needed

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• -Meajqa - He was defo my favourite faye character, despite the fact he went through sm because of Nura he was able to trust humans and i respect that. He was also really helpful with Aefes recovery as well

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• -Caduan - well,well,well in the 2nd book i wasn’t fully sure if i liked him but after this book i definitely don’t. He was just such a hypocrite the whole book 💀 Like idk he didn’t really have enough of a personality for me to forgive him for what he was did to my babies max and Tisaanah. He was also such a snake to Aefe as well and did really questionable things when it came to her.

✅ The 💫 romance 💫 now, Tisaanah and Max’s relationship really went THROUGH it in this book but the downs were so worth the ups and they just kept finding each other and loved each other and their relationship was just so unparalleled and deep and unique. 📜“I have made bad decisions before. But you are not, never have been, and never will be one of them. It is always you.”📜

Caduan and Aefe however … Idk. They’re both broken people beyond compare and they’re just trying to hold on to something the felt long ago (Caduan) or for Aefe, he literally created her from dark magic and then he was the only person she really got to interact with and he just kept telling her how much he lived her other self. Idk i feel like their love wasn’t really genuine or heartfelt but Clarissa did this on purpose i think because it was mentioned in the book a lot. 📜“This, I realized, was love. Love was worth destroying for.” 📜

✅ THE ENDING. 📜“It ends with two souls who create a future together.” 📜 omfg the the ending was so fucking perfect. I genuinely could not have thought up a better ending, Aefe ending was perfect for her and so was Max and Tisaanah’s. It was just so flawlessly written and so creative and gorgeous and amazing and it was just everything tbh. Made me sob happy tears 😭. Such a magnificent, incomparable ending to a magnificent and incomparable book series <333

❤️ The war of lost hearts i think will forever hold such a special place in my heart. My life feels changed after i’ve read it and i feel empty now it’s finished. Will 10000% be checking out more of this authors book because the way this was written was ✨immaculate✨

"That’s what we are fighting for, today. For a better, imperfect dawn after a long, imperfect night. I want to see that sunrise with you. Meet me there.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is it, this is my new favourite fantasy romance! All around 5 stars, each book was 5 stars and the series as whole is 5 stars - I am in love.

I find it hard to write reviews about these books because they are just so huge and so much happens in them, each one is just jam packed with the most vivid action scenes, the most horrifying violence, the most heart-wrenching and heartbreaking confessions, truths and stories and also some of the creepiest, chilling things you can think of.

"Tell me, little butterfly, what would you do for love?"

The love story in Mother of Death and Dawn is so beautiful, it's beautiful in all of the books, but in this one particularly because of the absolute highs and lows Max and Tisaanah go through. For the first half of the book I was sure that my heart was irreparably breaking along with them and then in true Carissa Broadbent style, I have learned, there is a massive life-changing event and absolutely stunningly written prose about the power of love and just what these characters will go through in the name of it.

“One hundred and eighty thousand days, and I thought of you in every one.”

What I love about these books as well as that there is no clear "bad guy", every single side of this war is waged by people simply trying to do better for their people, each bad decision a character makes is fueled by trauma that is understandable and relatable - the moral grayness on all sides of the story is what truly makes this a 10/10 read. Caduan and Aefe's story is probably the single most heart-breaking, agonizing tale of loss and love that I have ever read. So much wrong was done to both of them, especially Aefe, that you can't help but root for them even when they're saying and doing the most horrific things. SPOILER I am so glad they got some semblance of a happy ending, it may not have been the life together that they deserved after all that heart ache and damage - but I truly believe that death really is a door and they're on the other side together. END SPOILER

"It was the beginning of an end, brought upon by mortal hubris. Hands reaching into forces that should not be wielded, and thinning boundaries that should not be torn.

Tisaanah and Max continue to blow me away with their perfectness - if there is one thing I could criticize in this series it is that Tisaanah is almost too perfect. She's the character that can seemingly do no wrong, she's always so wise and so smart and so heroic that none of the other characters can seem to live up to her, it almost feels like she has no flaws. Regardless, I absolutely love her and think she is the most badass FMC that I have ever read and I cried, sobbed, happy tears for her in this book. The ending just absolutely devastated me, in a good way. I am ruined.

"Tell me, my ashen son, do you know how much a million memories weigh? How about one? It weighs enough to break a spine. It weighs enough to break a soul."

I have to say this book was pretty spooky as well, so this was a perfect October read for me - got to love that touch of horror. The absolutely terrifying creatures that were described in this book and the creepiness of the magic that they were trying to overcome really shook me. Nura is probably the scariest witch you could ever imagine, she was giving me proper Scarlet Witch vibes, and excuse me, but SPOILER an army of the living dead, are you kidding me? I truly pity the person who can be made to stoop so low in the name of love for her country to create literal zombies, oh my word. END SPOILER

Now excuse me while I go and shout from the rooftops, to everyone who will listen, that they have to, they MUST, it is IMPERATIVE every fantasy romance lover goes and reads this series. I am in awe and I am not sure if I will ever recover.