Michele's Reviews > Royals of Villain Academy: Books 5 - 8

So, I read both of the Royals of Villian Academy as the mega-books. There are 8 books in the series, but I read them as two separate 4 book novels. I think they were much better read that way. Not only did we get bonus chapters if you read the mega-books, but you also just get to flip the page to get to the next part of the story. I appreciated that.

Things I liked:

The Scions - the 4 young men who are set to take over the pentacle from their parents are very entertaining. When we first meet them, they fit all the normal stereotypes of a group of boys in an academic setting. We have Malcom, who is the leader and the one who looks perfect from the outside, Declan, the by the books quiet and studious one, Jude, who is the class clown and there for comic relief, and Connar, the muscle head who has no depth. At least that's what it seems like on first glance. They are all so much more than the roles they are given. All of the men have depths and differences. They all have secrets that they are trying to hide from everyone and grow and change throughout the story. They start off pretty awful, but as they open up to Rory and the reader, they grow and change and become believable and likeable characters. I really enjoyed seeing the depth and grown of each of them and the fact that there was more to them then the surface appearance. As a slight side note, Rory is also included in the Scions. However, when we first meet them, it is just the men until Rory wins them to her side. Any other use of Scions in this review will refer to all five of the Scions - Malcom, Declan, Jude, Connar, and Rory.

The Barons - okay, I didn't like them like them. But they are so fun to dislike. They make the perfect villains. Not only are they the villains of the stories, but the fact that they are the Scion's parents makes it even worse. They say they have the best interest of their kids and the fearmancer society at large, but that's a bunch of lies. Watching them act and watching their children's reactions to the actions is great. Especially since we see so much grown in the kids and so little grow or willingness to change in the adults. Maybe that made them a shade on dimensional, but the Barons truly fit the saying: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The magic system - When we first meet our FMC, Rory, she is living with who she thinks are her parents. They are joymancers, magic wielders that gain their power through creating joy in other people. That's a pretty cool idea. The more joy and good they do for people, the more power they get. But as in everything in nature, there is an opposite to this, and that's the fearmancers. They gain their power through scaring other people. Rory, who is a fearmancer by birth, has a lot of issues dealing with this aspect of the magic, because of how she was brought up. But finding ways to work around that show how flexible the magic system can be and that people can try different things. I liked that part a lot, because it's not the same magic system that is in every other fantasy story.

The setting - This was set at the fearmancer school, and all of the buildings and the university itself were named after the ruling Barons. Because of this setting, we understand from the very beginning how important to the fearmancer society those five main families are. The way the school is set up and the different aspects of the hierarchy in it really help the reader understand the society in general that we are being introduced to with Rory.

The POVs - I loved that we got different POVs from all of the main characters. I liked that we were able to get into the Scions' heads and see how they were reacting to different things. I really feel like that was part of the growth of the four male Scions. We got to see so much of their thoughts and realized how much was going on beneath the surface. It was nice to see these scary BMOC type guys had doubts and insecurities, just like everyone else. It made them much more believable. And being able to read the story with Rory's points of views just made the reader more invested. I do wish that we had gotten at least one chapter from each of the Barons. Their viewpoints would have been twisted, but it would have been so entertaining to see how they justified all of their violence and machinations in their heads. I do wish the bonus chapters had been added to their proper place in the stories. They were all great, but reading them at the end of each book took you out of the story a bit, since they were generally about things that happened early in the stories.

Things I was on the fence about:

Rory - I absolutely loved Rory in the first half of this series. She was the ultimate "you can knock me down and try your best to terrorize me, but I'm never giving up" main character. I liked her spunk and her fire. The fact that she was able to use the knowledge from her adoptive parents and form it into an armor and a weapon against the abuse she suffered at the hands of the other students was great. She refused to give in. As she started winning the Scions over to her point of view and making them really take a look at the society they were living in, she was perfectly written. However, in the second half of the story, she kind of annoyed me a bit. I'm not sure if it was just the fact that this was the first reverse harem book I've read or just that she became slightly whiney in the second half, but I feel like she lost her spunkiness towards the end. Instead of being the badass that she was in the first book, she spent the whole second book trying to talk her mother, a Baron, into seeing her viewpoint over and over again. Granted, Rory was 100% correct in her views, but her mother had NO interest in seeing anything from another viewpoint. She told Rory that multiple times. And yet, Rory wouldn't stop complaining about it and then trying to talk to her more, and then being surprised when her mom didn't listen or lashed out in another way. I get that she and the other Scions were trying to avoid an all-out war, but considering how each of the men's parents had either tried to kill them, put them under a compulsion spell, or physically abused them, Rory should have been clued into the fact that nothing was going to change with the Barons, especially through talk. The Barons were all about action, and that type of person does not stop just because someone wants to talk to them. Given that her mother had been held captive for 17 years and was looking for revenge, I feel that Rory should have used some of that same fire she had at the beginning to come up with a plan sooner, before so many people were killed.

The ending - *Don't read ahead if you don't want spoilers. There will be some mild spoilers in here. You've been warned. * After everything the Scions went through in all of the books, the ending seemed kind of rushed. Not the whole ending. They did do some really cool thinking outside of the normal magical boxes. They did actually work with the Naries, people who had no magic at all, to come up with some ideas to try to stop the Barons' plans. But honestly, the stuff they did seemed kind of bleh. Malcom, Declan, Connar, and Jude all grew up with these Barons. Even though Rory's mother had been taken prisoner and Declan's mom had died at the same time, the other Barons did not really change into monsters when Rory showed up. The men should have used the information about how their parents/aunt worked with Rory when they were trying to come up with a plan to thwart the Barons. Rory even witnessed some of the aggression of the Barons towards herself and the other Scions. I completely get that these were their parents, and they didn't want to take action against them, but it's not like the Barons were shy about taking action against the Scions. There comes a point when you have tried talking and they haven't listened and have used aggression with you that you just have to realize that it is going to some kind of battle. The Scions and their allies got there eventually. I just felt like by the time they got there, the last book was almost over and then everything moved at warp speed. The Scions spend the whole story talking about how strong their parents are and how hard it will be to beat them in a battle, and yet when we get to the final battle, it's like 5 minutes and it's over. None of the Scions seemed to have any trouble taking on the Barons who were left at this point. There were a few injuries here and there, but nothing major and anyone who did happen to die, other than the last two Barons, was just a minor, unnamed character. I don't know what could have been done differently. I feel like battle scenes like this in books always seem kind of quickly paced and over in a flash. I think if we had gotten some differing POVs during the last battle, it wouldn't have seemed quite as fast.

These books gave me some mild Zodiac Academy vibes, which I was okay with. I liked all of the characters. I enjoyed the magic system and the school setting. There were a few things here and there that I didn't really like, but nothing that detracted from the story as a whole.

My rating:

Royals of the Villain Academy Books 1-4: 5 stars
Royals of the Villain Academy Books 5-8 : 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.