You will die. Your children will die. The empire will burn.

Empress Li is out of favour at court. Foreign-born and past her prime, she is to be set aside. But she won’t go quietly. With nothing left to lose, Li will do anything to stop Emperor Lan signing a secret alliance that could tear the empire apart. Yet when her life is threatened, old mistakes come back to haunt her and only a three-year-old boy can change the course of history.

With everything at stake, could an innocent child be the best assassin?

Devin Madson’s We Ride the Storm was for sure one of my favorite reads from last year. I fell in love with her writing straight away, and started making plans to read the rest of her work! I’m sort of taking an atypical approach (for me) to her stories, because her series, The Reborn Empire (We Ride the Storm & the upcoming We Lie With Death) takes place after The Vengeance Trilogy, and In Shadows We Fall is a prequel to that trilogy. All these books take place in the same world, but I’ve been assured by the author herself that my approach will work fine, I’ll just have a different reading experience from someone who chooses to read these stories as they take place, chronologically.

I guess it reminds me a bit of some of the questions people have asked me about Brian Staveley’s series, Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne. The novel Skullsworn, while published most recently, takes place before the events of the main trilogy. And so while I read those in publication order, you could 100% read Skullsworn first! That just wasn’t my experience, so I can’t comment on how that will feel.

Ahem. Where was I?

This very slim 100-page novella is told from the POV of Empress Li, who has recently (and unceremoniously) been traded in for a younger woman by Emperor Lan. When we meet Li, her whole world is in turmoil. She & the Emperor have several children together, but her future in the city of Mei’lian is quite uncertain. She is also privy to the arrogant Emperor’s plans to wage a war that she feels can’t be won, and shouldn’t be fought. With really nothing left to lose, Li has to figure out who may still be loyal to her, and come up with a desperate plan to save herself, her children, and the empire.

I’ve done some slight snooping around and learned that Takehiko, Empress Li’s young son, is one of the main characters in The Vengeance Trilogy. Takehiko has a special gift (or curse, depending on your viewpoint), and I’m VERY curious to see an older version of this character going forward!

It’s hard reviewing something so short without giving too much away! I read this is one sitting & just loved it! Honestly, I think Devin Madson writes in a way that’s so fucking beautiful. This is a story that is equal parts tense, and heartbreaking, and stabby. In Shadows We Fall is short in terms of page count, but packs as much punch as some full length novels. Devin Madson turned into an “auto buy” author for me almost as soon as I began We Ride the Storm…I’m super excited to catch up with her back catalogue, and I can’t fucking wait to see what she comes up with next!!