Fallen King

I'd like to start by saying that I love the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. Mist and Fury is actually my favorite in the series.This book was like a bland version of that, more rushed. ACOTAR worked because it had more time to flesh out the characters and really show us how Tamlin changed from the first book, and the characters were more likable or relatable. This book didn't do that. The first book ended with Lyr being mostly normal though still a bit worse off considering what he had done and the consequences. But in this book, it was a complete 180. Lyr had changed so drastically he had been willing to seal away Aenor's power completely, which would have essentially killed her soul. All because he trusted someone else over her.Now, it was already established that Lyr had a hard time trusting Aenor in the first book but this one just increased that mistrust all because of a prophecy from a crazy witch, who had already been established to not give clear predictions. And he still trusted her every word as solid fact.Naturally, this spurred Aenor to leave him and head straight to Salem. Salem was to be endgame, obviously. I can understand they hated each other. I've seen it before with fated mates. That hate but still feeling that pull and rightness being with that person. However, I cannot justify his actions.I know he was not aware of her connection to him in the beginning, or he wasn't really acknowledging it but the fact that he controlled her mind and body on multiple occasions bothered me. I'm not a fan of that storyline and I'm even holding off reading a series I know will include it.My problem with this is not that Aenor left Lyr as I said my favorite book in ACOTAR was the book where the very same thing happens. My problem is how it was handled. Having Lyr want to seal her powers was fine but it literally came out of nowhere. Aenor mentions there was a distance between them but we never see any proof of it. You just start this book and suddenly they no longer care for each other. It happened so quickly, all within the first few chapters. With the short page count, I guess it makes sense to speed it along but there were moments in this book that could have been sacrificed to get some more time with Lyr and Aenor's growing distance, rather than slapping it in our face.And then we get to Salem. I really wanted to like his character and I do, to a point. The secretly kind evil guy is the kind I like. But I feel like Salem's kindness is practically non-existent until the end. Even when he learns the truth, he still doesn't change much. And it's getting frustrating that no one listens to Aenor. She's literally telling Salem what happens when he succeeds and he thinks she's lying to keep him from completing his task and refuses to actually see what happens until it is shoved in his face for him to accept.I know it isn't fair to really compare this to ACOTAR as that series dealt more with trauma and how it effects people and how it changed Tamlin and Feyre and the fact that the series is undoubtably more popular. But when faced with a trope like this, it's kind of hard not to. SJM is, at the time of writing this, the only author I've read who has had her MC leave their love interest in the first book for someone else in the second. But her characters always had a fleshed out reason, like we saw exactly how everything played out. This series just told us what was going on without really showing it until the final deciding moment.If you like this series, then I'm happy for you. I do plan on finishing the series and even reading a second series from this author [no sense in making a decision based off one series]. If you want to give it a try, I'd say go for it. I personally think it's a bit bland and the spice isn't as engaging as I would like but in the end, you have to come to your own conclusions on the series.