Fortuna Sworn
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Description
Fortuna Sworn is the last of her kind. Her brother has disappeared, leaving her alone. She hides among humans, spending her days working at a bar and her nights searching for him - until she catches the eye of a powerful faerie.
Collith desires Fortuna. And if she will bind herself to him, he offers something irresistible. So Fortuna leaves her safe existence behind and descends into a world of glamorous creatures and deadly power.
She soon realises it's not just her heart she has bargained with - but quite possibly her life.
_______
The first book in the darkly addictive romantic fantasy series that's already a TikTok sensation! Perfect for fans of Holly Black and Sarah J. Maas.
_______
'I am obsessed.' 5* reader review
'Absolutely SMASHED my expectations' 5* reader review
'Deliciously dark' 5* reader review
'The world she created is absolutely amazing and I love all of the characters, even the ones that can't be trusted!' 5* reader review
'An incredible, lush romantic fantasy' 5* reader review
Book Information
Posts
I usually don’t write reviews on books, unless I have very strong opinions about it, so bear with me with this one. Also after reading/listening to books 1-3 I had to lower my rating to 2 Stars so it might stop somebody else from reading it. After having devoured my best friends Audible Library, I came across Fortuna Sworn, thinking it might be a nice modern fantasy read. I have enjoyed Crescent City and The Mortal Instruments Series before, so you could say that this specific genre usually catches my attention pretty quickly and I can overlook things that may be a bit problematic because the story itself catches me. But boy was I wrong this time. When it comes to things like Worldbuilding, Character development, Plotlines and all of that, I am pretty bad at „rating“ it, but I can explain what bothered me about it. First of all: Why did I give 3 stars in the first place and not 2 or even 1 to begin with? Mostly because there were a lot unresolved plotlines which I hoped would later in the series become resolved or flow together to give you that big plottwist that magically makes the series better. Spoiler alert: that did not happen. The plotlines just became more and therefore more confusing and harder to follow. Seriously, i binged the first 3 audiobooks in the last few weeks but if you asked me for any specifics I would be absolutely lost and couldn’t tell you much. Overall the books felt more like a Wattpad Fanfiction that was trying to squeeze all the tropes there are in there but didn’t do it elegantly. Especially that random SA scene at the end of book 2 that only had the purpose of giving the character trauma so there is at least one plotline for the next book. I prefer my fanfics more on an Ao3 kind of level, thank you very much. Now you may ask yourself: Why not just one star then? The answer is easy: The species of the Nightmares. They had soooo much potential. I am a sucker for fantasy that involves things like dreams or illusions (The Raven Cycle for example) so I guess thats the „pretty privilege star“ Now to my review or more like all the things that bothered me about this series (I’ll probably copy and paste this to the other books, as mentioned I usually don’t take the time to sit down and write reviews unless I have strong opinions). Please be aware that from this point on there will be spoilers which I will use to explain my points. First of all the main character Fortuna: In my eyes she is an entitled, reckless but at the same time colorless and dull person who just makes herself more unlikeable with every stupid irrational decision she makes. Don’t get me wrong, I like badass female characters when they are actually badass and dont just have a big mouth that covers up their bad decisions. She wants to save her brother from the fangs of the Unseelie Court but when she finally finds him, he is pretty happy there and actually doesn’t want to be saved. What does our smart and snarky protagonist do next? Riiight, completely ignore her brothers wishes and slay the person he loves later on in the book in order to set him free from a place he didn’t want to leave and from a person that he had loved. You could argue about the relationship between Damon and (sorry, I forgot his name) was toxic but that does not justify Fortunas actions for me. Then we got the whole „i want to become the queen of the unseelie court to destroy it“ plan… that just doesn’t seem to happen? She complains about Collith being so slow with his politics and after freeing the slaves she basically neglects all her duties for an entire book instead of just going on with her oh so grand plan. The next thing that particularly scratched me in the wrong spot was when in book 3 she tried to lecture somebody about holding a knife wrong to defend themselves, just because she had taken a bunch of self-defense lessons in the time before and her dad has taught her some in her childhood. As somebody who has had self-defense lessons for almost 10 years I can guarantee you that everything you learn in the first year is just buildup of muscle memory. I don’t buy it. Even though she is „fallen“, it still takes a lot of time to master self-defense enough to actually use it efficiently. And it does absolutely not justify talking down to somebody who either never had those lessons or just had one panic-moment where the theoretically learned steps just couldn’t be taken in the same perfect way that you would while training. Yeah so… you could say that I Don’t really connect with the main character. But what about the love interests? They don’t seem to connect with her either. All of the potential love interests she has in the book just have little to no chemistry with her in my opinion. I just waited for that one plottwist where she would break up with Collith because there’s one new character that actually has chemistry with her - that also never came. Maybe in the books after the 3rd one but I will not read that. Since we are at the topic of love-interests - the teasing of a possible love triangle between Collith, Laurie and Fortuna also bothered me. Not because I do not like polyships (I actually love them, when the dynamic is interesting) but I was not feeling it and all the „subtle“ remarks that were hinting at this just felt icky to me. So thats another reason why I wont continue. If you made it to the end of this review: congratulations. And apologies. I didn’t plan for this to become so long but I just had to let that out. If you don’t agree with me, thats fine with me but please don’t go ahead and only comment on this to give me hate for my opinion, I would appreciate that a lot.
Description
Fortuna Sworn is the last of her kind. Her brother has disappeared, leaving her alone. She hides among humans, spending her days working at a bar and her nights searching for him - until she catches the eye of a powerful faerie.
Collith desires Fortuna. And if she will bind herself to him, he offers something irresistible. So Fortuna leaves her safe existence behind and descends into a world of glamorous creatures and deadly power.
She soon realises it's not just her heart she has bargained with - but quite possibly her life.
_______
The first book in the darkly addictive romantic fantasy series that's already a TikTok sensation! Perfect for fans of Holly Black and Sarah J. Maas.
_______
'I am obsessed.' 5* reader review
'Absolutely SMASHED my expectations' 5* reader review
'Deliciously dark' 5* reader review
'The world she created is absolutely amazing and I love all of the characters, even the ones that can't be trusted!' 5* reader review
'An incredible, lush romantic fantasy' 5* reader review
Book Information
Posts
I usually don’t write reviews on books, unless I have very strong opinions about it, so bear with me with this one. Also after reading/listening to books 1-3 I had to lower my rating to 2 Stars so it might stop somebody else from reading it. After having devoured my best friends Audible Library, I came across Fortuna Sworn, thinking it might be a nice modern fantasy read. I have enjoyed Crescent City and The Mortal Instruments Series before, so you could say that this specific genre usually catches my attention pretty quickly and I can overlook things that may be a bit problematic because the story itself catches me. But boy was I wrong this time. When it comes to things like Worldbuilding, Character development, Plotlines and all of that, I am pretty bad at „rating“ it, but I can explain what bothered me about it. First of all: Why did I give 3 stars in the first place and not 2 or even 1 to begin with? Mostly because there were a lot unresolved plotlines which I hoped would later in the series become resolved or flow together to give you that big plottwist that magically makes the series better. Spoiler alert: that did not happen. The plotlines just became more and therefore more confusing and harder to follow. Seriously, i binged the first 3 audiobooks in the last few weeks but if you asked me for any specifics I would be absolutely lost and couldn’t tell you much. Overall the books felt more like a Wattpad Fanfiction that was trying to squeeze all the tropes there are in there but didn’t do it elegantly. Especially that random SA scene at the end of book 2 that only had the purpose of giving the character trauma so there is at least one plotline for the next book. I prefer my fanfics more on an Ao3 kind of level, thank you very much. Now you may ask yourself: Why not just one star then? The answer is easy: The species of the Nightmares. They had soooo much potential. I am a sucker for fantasy that involves things like dreams or illusions (The Raven Cycle for example) so I guess thats the „pretty privilege star“ Now to my review or more like all the things that bothered me about this series (I’ll probably copy and paste this to the other books, as mentioned I usually don’t take the time to sit down and write reviews unless I have strong opinions). Please be aware that from this point on there will be spoilers which I will use to explain my points. First of all the main character Fortuna: In my eyes she is an entitled, reckless but at the same time colorless and dull person who just makes herself more unlikeable with every stupid irrational decision she makes. Don’t get me wrong, I like badass female characters when they are actually badass and dont just have a big mouth that covers up their bad decisions. She wants to save her brother from the fangs of the Unseelie Court but when she finally finds him, he is pretty happy there and actually doesn’t want to be saved. What does our smart and snarky protagonist do next? Riiight, completely ignore her brothers wishes and slay the person he loves later on in the book in order to set him free from a place he didn’t want to leave and from a person that he had loved. You could argue about the relationship between Damon and (sorry, I forgot his name) was toxic but that does not justify Fortunas actions for me. Then we got the whole „i want to become the queen of the unseelie court to destroy it“ plan… that just doesn’t seem to happen? She complains about Collith being so slow with his politics and after freeing the slaves she basically neglects all her duties for an entire book instead of just going on with her oh so grand plan. The next thing that particularly scratched me in the wrong spot was when in book 3 she tried to lecture somebody about holding a knife wrong to defend themselves, just because she had taken a bunch of self-defense lessons in the time before and her dad has taught her some in her childhood. As somebody who has had self-defense lessons for almost 10 years I can guarantee you that everything you learn in the first year is just buildup of muscle memory. I don’t buy it. Even though she is „fallen“, it still takes a lot of time to master self-defense enough to actually use it efficiently. And it does absolutely not justify talking down to somebody who either never had those lessons or just had one panic-moment where the theoretically learned steps just couldn’t be taken in the same perfect way that you would while training. Yeah so… you could say that I Don’t really connect with the main character. But what about the love interests? They don’t seem to connect with her either. All of the potential love interests she has in the book just have little to no chemistry with her in my opinion. I just waited for that one plottwist where she would break up with Collith because there’s one new character that actually has chemistry with her - that also never came. Maybe in the books after the 3rd one but I will not read that. Since we are at the topic of love-interests - the teasing of a possible love triangle between Collith, Laurie and Fortuna also bothered me. Not because I do not like polyships (I actually love them, when the dynamic is interesting) but I was not feeling it and all the „subtle“ remarks that were hinting at this just felt icky to me. So thats another reason why I wont continue. If you made it to the end of this review: congratulations. And apologies. I didn’t plan for this to become so long but I just had to let that out. If you don’t agree with me, thats fine with me but please don’t go ahead and only comment on this to give me hate for my opinion, I would appreciate that a lot.