I am so happy I was given the opportunity to read and review this. As I have mentioned a few times on this blog, Danielle L. Jensen is becoming a favorite author of mine. Tarnished Empire is a new installment of the Dark Shores series. It follows Marcus and introduces some new characters, Agrippa and Silvara, who I absolutely adored. There is also an openly gay couple in this novella that I appreciated.

Before I continue any further, I would like to speak about the order of the series. Dark Shores and Dark Skies are parallel storylines and Tarnished Empire takes place before, so you can read them in any order. If you want more fantasy, I recommend starting with Dark Shores so you can become invested enough in Marcus to read his novella.

Tarnished Empire is very war centric and gives Galdiator/Troy vibes. There are definitely still some fantasy elements, but they are in the background. In this story, there are three point of views:

I absolutely devoured this within a day, which says a lot. I tend to be a slow reader, but I couldn’t put this down. It really helps the chapters are short, which I appreciate. I just kept telling myself “one more chapter” until I finished the whole thing!

This was a very light read given the setting of this story. Luckily for me, the battle was one of the very last chapters. It was pretty character centric up until that point. I laughed and gasped all throughout. Just please read this series so I can have someone to talk about this with! I am obsessed.