Children of Fallen Gods is the second installment in The War of Lost Hearts trilogy, directly continuing the story from Daughter of No Worlds. A series in the established romantasy genre, The War of Lost Hearts reflects the grand scale of epic fantasy, with a continent-spanning civil war, complex magical systems, and political machinations. These elements being introduced in the first novel, the second novel is able to deepen and complicate the fantasy world, as well as reveal hidden information about the characters and their relationships.

In the first book, the protagonist Tisaanah, a former slave from the conquered nation of Nyzerene, travels to the kingdom of Ara seeking magic to free her people from enslavement in Threll. To do so, she makes a blood pact with the Orders of Ara, a powerful organization of magic-wielders, binding herself to their service in exchange for magical power. Tisaanah is trained by Maxantarius “Max” Farlione, a war-haunted and reclusive former soldier who is also indebted to the Orders. As romantasy, the narrative is partly driven by the evolving relationship between Tisaanah and Max, which develops as the series unfolds. As their relationship deepens, Tisaanah masters her formidable abilities, amplified by a mysterious entity named Reshaye that was implanted in Max by the Orders and which moves to inhabit Tisaanah. Daughter of No Worlds ends with Tisaanah and Max traveling to Threll, where they overthrow the tyrannical Mikov family and liberate many of Tisaanah’s enslaved compatriots.

Ending on a climax, the first book in the series prepares the reader for the further challenges of Children of Fallen Gods by stating Tisaanah’s intention to sail to Ara. The second book picks this action immediately, as Tisaanah and her companions arrive to find the kingdom in turmoil complicating the narrative. The world-building and exposition of the first novel creates a foundation to allow Children of Fallen Gods’s opening to be fast-paced and to introduce a complex network of further characters and political alliances. Developing the central romance between Tisaanah and Max established in Daughter of No Worlds, the second book tests this bond by the demands of war, physical separation, and the trauma of their pasts, increasingly revealed as the series progresses.