As She Ascends by Jodi Meadows

As She Ascends (Fallen Isles, #2)

by Jodi Meadows

“A fiercely imagined world!” —Mary E. Pearson, New York Times bestselling author of the Remnant Chronicles

From the New York Times bestselling co-author of My Plain Jane comes the second book in a smoldering fantasy trilogy about a girl who must embrace her latent power or lose the dragons she loves. Perfect for fans of Julie Kagawa and Kendare Blake.

Mira the Dragonhearted is on the run with her friends following a fiery escape from the prison where she’d been condemned for speaking out against dragon trafficking.

And she wants answers. Has the treaty she’s been defending her whole life truly sold out the Fallen Isles to their enemies? Did her own parents lie to her? Will she lose control of her power and hurt the ones she loves?

The only way to find the truth is to go home again, to face the people who betrayed her and the parents she’s not sure she can trust. Home, where she must learn to rise above her fears. Or be consumed.

Reviewed by ladygrey on

2.5 of 5 stars

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This is an interesting book. Normally I’d complain about the repetition where Mira reminds the reader through her inner monologue of past events.... that happened in THIS book. It happens all the time and normally it drives me crazy because, I know—I just read it. But this time I put the book down for nearly a month and suddenly I appreciated those reminders of what happened just a few chapters ago.

Also Mira is a conundrum. She’s all blazing with power one moment and full of rage that won’t tame her. But then almost her entire inner monologue is, ‘I messed up.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I didn’t mean to offend them.’ ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ It’s actually kind of aggravating because there’s no balance to it. It’s all self recrimination even for the moments where she seizes her power and stops being afraid—she beats herself up for that too!

She maybe grows out of it a little at the end (we’ll see in the next book). Embraces her power and finds her voice and stops being afraid. The scenes with her parents were pretty satisfying. It maybe won’t last but she’s already grown as a character from the first book so i expect to see that continue.

Plus there’s allusions to Star Trek with One and basically the Algotti Empire as the Federation with its Prime Directive.

And for all the endless world building and martyr heroine, it’s still hold’s my interest and (mostly) doesn’t annoy me so I don’t want to throw it across the room for being 600 pages. And I want to read the third one to see how it all ends. Which is really saying something.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 17 May, 2020: Finished reading
  • 17 May, 2020: Reviewed