Ruthless Fae: I Fell Down This Rabbit Hole Willingly

Four Kings, One Very Overwhelmed Heir, and a School That Wants Her Dead

Here’s the thing about starting Ruthless Fae: you are not really starting anything. This book picks up the Zodiac Academy cast (the vampires, the dragons, the whole unhinged supernatural boarding school ecosystem) and drops them into Faerie, a realm most of them have spent the entire original series being warned about. So if you have not read the eight (yes, eight) Zodiac Academy books first, you are going to be lost in about the first thirty pages, and I mean that as a genuine warning, not a flex about how much lore I’ve absorbed.

The setup is that our heroine has been named the missing heir to the fae throne, which means she’s suddenly got a target on her back, a crown she never asked for, and a court full of people who’d rather see her dead than kneeling. Enter the requisite pack of gorgeous, dangerous men who are somehow all drawn to her, all suspicious of each other, and all extremely committed to being emotionally constipated about it for as long as narratively possible. It’s reverse harem in its purest form: everyone is beautiful, everyone is furious, and half the conflict could be solved by one honest conversation that absolutely will not happen until book three of some future series.

I want to be honest and say the fae politics here are not exactly Tolkien. Nobody is reading Ruthless Fae for a masterclass in court intrigue. You’re reading it because you want to watch a girl who’s been through hell get handed a crown, a kingdom, and four (or is it five, I genuinely lost count at one point) impossibly hot men who all want to fight each other over her, sometimes literally.

The Chaos Is the Point, and Also Sometimes the Problem

What actually works here is the voice. Peckham and Valenti write banter like it’s a competitive sport, and the heroine’s internal monologue is genuinely funny in a way a lot of fantasy romance forgets to be. There’s a scene early on where she’s supposed to be having a Very Serious Political Moment and instead she’s mentally cataloguing which of the men in the room she’d like to shove into a wall, and it made me laugh out loud on a plane, which got me a look from the guy next to me that I still think about.

What doesn’t work: the pacing sags hard in the middle third. There’s a stretch of court politics and vague prophecy talk that reads like filler, like the authors needed pages between spicy scenes and grabbed whatever was lying around. I found myself skimming, which I almost never do, and then feeling guilty about skimming a book I was still enjoying, which is a very specific kind of reading experience.

I also want to flag, because I’d be lying if I didn’t, that this is not subtle writing. The prose leans purple in places, the internal metaphors get a little much (there is only so many times a man’s eyes can be described as “storm clouds” before I start picturing an actual weather system), and if you’re the kind of reader who needs restraint in your fantasy, this is not your book. But here’s my confession: I think I love it partly because it doesn’t restrain itself. I’ve read plenty of technically better fantasy that I forgot within a week. I have not forgotten the scene where she stands in front of the entire fae court and basically dares them to kill her, because it was unhinged and a little stupid and completely thrilling anyway.

Am I saying this book is good in the way a workshop teacher would define good? No. Am I saying I’d read the next one at 1am on a work night? Also yes. Both things are true and I’ve stopped pretending they can’t coexist.

If you want to actually own a copy instead of library-hopping like I did for the first read, here’s where to find it.

A crown doesn’t make you powerful. It just makes people notice you before they try to take you down.

About Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti

These two are basically the reigning queens of the modern reverse harem boom, and I mean that as a real compliment, not a backhanded one. They’ve built an entire interconnected universe out of Zodiac Academy and its spinoffs, and they write together with a speed and consistency that honestly makes me a little exhausted just thinking about their release schedule. They know exactly what their readers want, which is spice, chaos, banter, and men who are catastrophically bad at communicating, and they deliver it without apology. Say what you want about the prose, but they’ve built one of the most devoted fandoms in the genre, and that doesn’t happen by accident.

If This Wrecked You (In a Good Way), Read These Next

• Zodiac Academy: The Awakening by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, because you genuinely need to start here first if you haven’t
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, for fae politics with more polish and fewer men to keep track of
• Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, if you want the academy-and-danger energy with dragons instead of a full harem
• Crave by Tracy Wolff, for more unhinged supernatural boarding school chaos with a smaller cast to hold onto

For your book club

1. Does the heroine actually grow into her role as heir, or does the plot just keep telling us she has?
2. Which of the love interests do you think gets the least narrative attention, and does that bother you?
3. Is the humor in the writing a strength or does it undercut the tension in the darker scenes?
4. Do you think this book works as an entry point, or is it truly only for existing Zodiac Academy fans?
5. What does the fae court’s obsession with bloodlines and crowns say about power in this world, if anything?