Lost Legacies series by Maddox Grey

Author Maddox Grey has very graciously allowed me to listen to free eaudio copies for her entire series (to date) in exchange for honest reviews. I will continue to add reviews to this post as I make my way through the series.

#0.5

Title: A Shift in Darkness

I had a hard time keeping my attention on this prequel. I was driving and my adderall had worn off, but I’ve paid attention to other audiobooks just fine under the same circumstances, so my mind was finding something inaccessible about the book. Could have been the influx of information, navigating a new world and meeting new characters, but I feel it was more likely due to Janae’s narration.

She’s very talented, but I don’t think she’s well suited to voicing Nemain’s thoughts. Nemain has a fierce personality, tenacious, athletic, aggressive, physical. A force of nature. A dog with a bone (er….cat with a bone?). Janae does not sound like that. She sounds like a placid lake you gaze upon to relax. She sounds like she should be narrating women’s fiction; I kept thinking she sounds like a mom. Her exposition was bland as cardboard, at least for a story full of action that needs verve. She infused the narrative with such little energy that sometimes I didn’t realize an action scene had begun until Nemain was injured. Janae’s dialogue delivery was better, but between conversations she lulled my mind into wandering. And thus, the difficulty following along.

Unfortunately, she narrates the six books of this series available to date, and will likely see it to completion, so I’m just going to have to deal with it.

That said, I like how Grey writes, and I liked this story. On to book 1!

#1

Title: A Shift in Shadows

I’m confused.

I started with the prequel, A Shift in Darkness. The whole reason for it was that Nemain was exhausting herself by searching relentlessly for the warlock who killed her love, and her friends forced her to take a break. At the end, said warlock abducted her, and so this book starts out with Nemain being rescued.

I thought she’d recover and redouble her pursuit of the warlock, that much more fueled by the indignity of her captivity. But she doesn’t. I don’t remember her searching for him at all. Actually, I believe she was hiding from him. Avoiding him.

But….but the plot is supposed to be her seeking revenge. So……what does that mean?

It means there is no plot. None. It’s more “A Few Days in the Life”: hang out with Nemain as she introduces you to everyone she knows, their families, their SOs, also some other people, and her enemies. They explain the world and the lore all in one go while they rehash old grudges, create new ones, and perpetuate social and political drama we have no reference for. Stuff happens to Nemain and she reacts, but she instigates very little herself.

It didn’t take long before I lost track of who was who and related to whomever, what species they were, the specs of their species, what powers they had, what purpose they served—which was none, because there was no plot. They were all just existing in the same space.

People, I make lists for my lists. I can’t absorb all those characters and their backstories and relations and motivations, especially if they don’t serve a relatively immediate purpose. Toward the end I’d stopped being able to take in new information and can only remember the broad strokes of what happened. Ya gotta give me a little in each book. Like rolling parts of a snowman, start small and build.

Also, plot points. Know what they are, map them out.

Me: Inciting incident.

Book: Sebastian kills Myrna!

Me: That happened decades ago.

Book: No problem, he’s a Dreamweaver and can make Nemain relive it.

Me: That could work to make the reader give a shit about Nemain’s motivation, but we still need an inciting incident for the self-contained arc of this novel.

Book: Sebastian abducted and tortured Nemain, obviously.

Me: One, that happens in a different book. Two, that’s more of a plot twist, turning the table. Maybe a good midpoint. Still need inciting incident.

Book: …She gets rescued?

Me: Noooot a good start for a strong female character, but fine. Then what? Does she take advantage of her proximity to the warlock, the not inconsiderable help of her rescuer, and the element of surprise, and attacks?

Book: What? No. That’s the prologue—she gets rescued.

Me: Then it’s not the inciting incident. Why is that the prologue, anyway? What does it set up?

Book: Nemain’s PTSD.

Me: Okay……but it also demonstrates her inability to resolve her own conflicts. To solve problems. And perhaps that she’s in over her head. Before the story’s even started. We’re supposed to root for her?

Book: It does not! Shut up.

Me: *pinches bridge of nose* Okay. One more try. Inciting incident—go.

Book: Well, she wakes up, does a bunch of stuff to convey her restlessness—probably shouldn’t be drinking coffee, to be honest. Spars with her old and mysterious vampire friend-cum-roommate, goes for a run in either human or feline form, or both, can’t clearly recall, has sex with her casual werewolf butt buddy, goes to a bar owned by her kinda best friend and sometimes demon lover and gets into a mild fight with some fae—lokis? both?—over old business, chats with said friend-slash-demon-lover, senses a vampire in an alley and gets scared and runs away because PTSD. She dreams about Myrna’s death and Sebastian’s there to taunt her, then suddenly she’s talking to her necromancer brother, who’s with his lover, who Nemain has history with, then—

Me: I’m gonna stop ya there. Does any of that introduce a self-contained plotline for this book? Establishes a central conflict, gives the main character a goal to work toward, fail at, and eventually succeed at?

Book: *thinks* No.

Me: How far are we at that point?

Book: About 20%

Me: *hands a dunce cap and points to the corner*

Nemain’s a decent character, but she needs something to do, as evidenced by her frequent need to “blow off steam.” A plot would help with that. Also, in Nemain, Grey wants to have their cake and eat it, too—they want Nemain to be a bad-ass, motorcycle-riding, kung fu-fighting, charming, smirking, brash, secret-rare-power-possessing mercenary, or whatever Nemain does for a living, at the same time she’s a broken victim with PTSD hiding from an abusive and toxic ex. It’s possible but very, very difficult to give emotional depth and vulnerability to someone who’s also supposed to be hardened, highly trained, and disciplined, and Grey does not manage it, imo.

The narration doesn’t help, either. As I attested in my review for the prequel, while Krys Janae is very talented as a narrator, I don’t feel she’s a good fit for Nemain. She sounds too steady and placid, often not giving the words she’s reading the tension, energy, and edgy/fraught/angsty tone they need.

I enjoyed the variety of relationships depicted here. I support free love and am open-minded, but I do prefer monogamous M/F romances in my fiction, so I’m glad the author explained before I started reading so I wasn’t taken off guard. Nemain is pansexual and poly, though I’m not sure if that means polysexual or polyamorous, or both—I googled the differences among the terms and narrowly avoided a rabbit hole. The author said Nemain’s romance in the series is largely with one male, and if that male is Andrei…..I’m disappointed. He’s pretty bland personality-wise, and only a werewolf in a world where Nemain could date someone much, much more interesting. Not gonna lie, I wanted him to stay dead.

Grey definitely has a colorful imagination and possesses writing talent but this book suggests they lack experience with storytelling, and either has no editor, needs a better one, or needs to listen to their editor’s advice.

Let’s see if book 2 is an improvement.

#2

Title: A Shift in Fate

This was indeed an improvement on book 1.

Book 1 read like Grey wanted to tell this sprawling epic but didn’t know how to start it, so they just barfed up all the information on the page and hoped the reader could make sense of it and like it.

Book 2 actually had a plot. There was a goal, there were conflicts, there was a climax, there was a resolution. The cast list and relevant drama was more limited–still too many, imo, but an improvement on book 1. The subplots threatened to steal the stage, but Grey reined them in. In the end, they were balanced, just perhaps needed to be paced differently.

I don’t like Nemain any more or less than I did in book 1. I don’t love her but I also don’t hate her. I hope Andre stays out of the picture. I wanted more Eddie until the epilogue; now I’m not sure what to think about him. Mikhail is interesting. I didn’t get to know anyone else well enough to care much about them.

There’s a lot of yapping. Just because it’s dialogue doesn’t mean it’s showing and not telling; here it’s often exposition with different punctuation. Less talk, more action, please.

Although I admit I don’t always notice the action when it happens, and that’s due to Janae’s narration. I like it even less than before, for the same reasons. Does not suit Nemain, too steady, too placid, not enough energy or edge. I struggle not to tune out of the story, and it’s because of the narration. It’s boring. If Krys Janae’s narrating, one star will always be discounted.

Okay, book 3, bring it on.