Odessa is one of Karthia's master necromancers, catering to the kingdom's ruling Dead. Whenever a noble dies, it's Odessa's job to raise them by retrieving their souls from a dreamy and dangerous shadow world called the Deadlands. But there is a cost to being raised--the Dead must remain shrouded, or risk transforming into zombie-like monsters known as Shades. If even a hint of flesh is exposed, the grotesque transformation will begin. A dramatic uptick in Shade attacks raises suspicions and fears among Odessa's necromancer community. Soon a crushing loss of one of their own reveals a disturbing conspiracy: someone is intentionally creating Shades by tearing shrouds from the Dead--and training them to attack. Odessa is faced with a terrifying question: What if her necromancer's magic is the weapon that brings Karthia to its knees?
What We're Doing
The premise is simple: one person (Person A) has read the entire book, while the other (Person B) has only read the synopsis and been given a quick description of the most important characters. Person A interviews Person B, asking them specific questions about the book. Person B then answers the questions with absolute confidence, acting as though they have, in fact, read the book before. Any spoilers in the interview section are purely by chance. After the interview, Person A will take the time to go into detail about the questions and address some of person B’s responses. This section will obviously be filled with spoilers, so if you don’t want them just stop at the end of the interview, go read the book, and then come back to finish reading this post!
The book: Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glann Marsh
The Interviewer: Suzie (S)
The Interviewed: Abby (A)
Let’s begin.
The Interview
My first question: there are five different types of magic in the book, as obviously you know.
Yeah.
Necromancers, healers, beastmasters, inventors, and weather mages. I want you to tell me what each form of magic can do and what some of the drawbacks of using it are. Let’s start with necromancers.
Okay. A necromancer is someone that can harness every kind of magic around them, and they get energy from the earth.They feed off of it, and they return it back, ya know. Power… whoo!
And the drawback is…
It takes them a long time to fill up their energy reserves, but they’re incredibly powerful.
Alright. And what can they do with that power?
Stop bad guys!
Okay. Second form of magic: healers.
Oh healers… heal. With their hands. And in rare cases, with their tears.
What’s the drawback to using their power?
They lose their.. Their own health to heal other people. Their health gets lower.
What about the beastmasters?
So… They’re people that can connect with animals like dragons and…
[Conversation about orange juice]
Okay, they can basically connect with any animal and they can use their magic to calm these animals down. Like… If it’s a horse, they can use their magic to like ‘whoa horsey!’ and then they ride the horse, if the horse is okay with it. The drawback is that humans will hate them the more they use their powers.
And the weather mages?
They control the weather. They can make it rain. Snow. They can make it sunny. Cloudy. Whatever they want. The drawback is though that they can only do it once a month, or something. They can’t just do it constantly all the time.
So they have a time limitation?
Yeah.
Alright. Now tell me about the last type: type inventors, the craftsmen.
These people. When I think of these people, I think of the people from the Lego Movie. You know the ones who see the legos and go ‘hh! I know what I can do!’ and it comes in like a vision? Like a third eye kind of inventing things, and they just know ‘ohmygosh I just have to put this together’ and then they have something. The drawback is… that’s the only thing you can do really well.
Of the five types of magic, which one would you choose to weild?
I think I’d have to say… I would want to be a beast tamer.
As you know, a very important character dies early in the book.
Haha, yes. Obviously!
How did you feel about the way their death impacted Odessa (the main character)?
Well… she was incredibly distraught, she lost touch with her personally and forgot who she was, and in this fit of sadness and depression from losing her lover, she… lost control of her magic, and it starts to overtake her! But! She changed. She had some help. She had some friends who were there for her and were like ‘Stop!’.
Which friends?
Simeon! He’s the one. He was there for her.
And what kind of magic does he wield?
Uhh… He was a necromancer.
So… a lot of this book focused on change and learning to accept change and things change as they will and [continues to ramble and use the words change several more times in this sentence for some unknown reason]. Which character do you think changed the most throughout this book?
In my personal opinion… Odessa. She is a character that had to deal with change, but she dealt with it like…
What kind of changes did she have to deal with?
She deals with change in her magic. Now how?
Mh-hmm…
I do not know. But I know that the magic begins to change, and she realizes things she didn’t realize before, and it makes her become more herself.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Oh my gosh, this is easy! [looking at character cards + descriptions] Because she’s beautiful, and she seems smart… Valoria! I mean, who doesn’t want to be a princess? Who doesn’t want to be wearing a beautiful red dress? Who doesn’t want to be a genius invent things in secret and reading forbidden books? I mean, come on. You can’t get much more amazing than that.
What’s your favorite of her secret inventions?
Oh. Yeah. I love that invention she made… In that one chapter… It was a really good invention…
Abby, you gotta name something
I really love it. Like… the invention of flight!
Oh. Alright. How did you feel about the ending of the book?
Frankly? I loved it. But I know that’s against popular opinion, but I loved it because it was like happily ever after, and everyone was just running around hugging and kissing and like ‘freedom, woo!!’ and I just… loved it. Even though some characters may have parted from the world by that point…
So there’s a pretty big betrayal in this book. Tell me about it.
When Evander… uhh… betrayed everyone like that…
What does he do?
He… sold out Simeon. And Danial. To the captain of the guard because this kingdom has a lot of rules like… Old England. You know what I’m saying?
No
I don’t know what I’m saying!
What did he sell them out for?
For… uhh… being gay. That’s why. And it’s like maybe this kingdom had some laws or prejudice or something, and the captain of the guard just like… takes it personal. And… ya know.
What was your favorite line in this book? (remember, she has not read this book)
My favorite line was when… Jax goes ‘hey bro. Look at this tattoo, man. Isn’t that cool?’
Why is that your favorite line???
Because who doesn’t love flaunting their tattoo?
Okayyyy. Alright, final question: will you read this book?
Yes. Of course! The more I’m talking about it, the more interesting it’s sounding! I need to read it now!
Suzie's Review 5/5🌟
Okay, let’s start by addressing the questions I asked Abby and comparing her answers to the actual events of the book. There will be spoilers. Obviously.
First up: the magic system in this book.
It’s unlike anything I’ve read before. I’ve seen magic based on eye color before, but only unusual eye colors like amber, purple, green, etc. This book, however, has magic determined by all eye colors!
Blue eyed people have the magic of necromancy. Basically, they can raise people from the dead. The downside is that they can never be raised themselves. Hazel eyed people get to be healers, but the more they heal, the weaker they get. Beastmasters have green eyes, and they can communicate with animals. However, if they go too far into an animal’s mind, the beastmaster can become a bit feral themselves. Weather mages are grey eyed, and they can (obviously) control the weather, but if they try to use too much power at once, they can kill themselves. Brown eyed people are inventors, and as far as I can tell they have no negative effects to using their gift??? That might be addressed in book 2, but I haven’t read it yet, haha.
Abby actually wasn’t that far off about how the early character death effected Odessa, though I am a bit disappointed that I didn’t get her to actually name who died. Oh well, better luck next time. I really liked the way that the author handled Odessa’s grief in Reign of the Fallen. There have been so many times when someone close to the main character in a YA book dies and the MC mourns for about a chapter before going “yeah, okay. I’m ready to use this a fuel and murder some things. And also I am now completely fine with getting close with this brand new person and I have 0 worries about them dying, too”, and that annoys the hell out of me. I always appreciate it when the author actually gives a character time to mourn, especially when the dead is as important to them as Evander was to Odessa.
On that same note, I also want to talk about the way Sarah Glenn Marsh addressed addiction in this book. I thought it was very well handled and it hurt so much every time Odessa drank another potion, but at the same time I was like “yeah, I get it. It’s wrong. We all know it’s wrong. But what other choice is there?”. It felt very real, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen addiction talked about like this in a YA book before. At least not in YA fantasy, and definitely not in the main character.
Abby was right about Valoria being a great character, but my favorite was actually Meredy because, ya know, I have a type & Meredy definitely fits it haha. I was shocked when Abby answered the question about Valoria’s inventions correctly, though. I mean, of all the things in a fantasy world she could have chosen, she picked flight? The one invention of Valoria’s that they actually talk about in detail? Seriously? What are the odds???
The question about betrayal, however, is where she got a bit off from the book. She did pick Simeon and Danial out as a gay couple, which impressed me, but that’s about the only thing right with her answer. They most certainly did not get turned into the city guard for being gay. One of the best things about this book is how just… casually queer so many of the charactrs are and no one even thinks about blinking twice at it. And the main character is bi! Gotta love that rep!
As for the line about Jax and his tattoos… yeah, I don’t know where that came from, but it was absolutely hilarious. And in all fairness, Jax does seem pretty proud of those tattoos.
I do have more things I want to say about this book, but this blog post is already ridiculously long, so I’ll hold off on it for now. Maybe I’ll do a full review of the series after I’ve read Song of the Dead.