Royals of Villain Academy: Books 1 – 4 by Eva Chase

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A long-lost heir just discovering her powers. A college of vicious magic. These villains have never met anyone like her…

When mages slaughter my parents in front of me, I have no time to mourn. The murderers drag me to a brutal college where I learn I’m the heir to a royal family of dark magic. I’m destined to manipulate the world through fear—and to stand beside the four scorching-hot, arrogant young men who rule this school.

Unfortunately, I’m having trouble locating my supposedly wicked skills.

Whether I want to or not, I have to tap into my talents fast if I want to survive. The students here are even more vicious than the teachers, and my fellow heirs are worst of all. The four of them crush anyone who doesn’t kowtow.

No way will I bow to any ruthless royal, no matter how alluring. They can turn on the charm or tear me down, but they can’t break me.

I don’t care about ruling. I don’t care about magic. But I’ll take what I can get to avenge the people I loved.

The moment I master the dark power inside me, I’m razing this place to the ground.

Royals of Villain Academy

Villain academy fearmancers!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🙂🥰☺️😎
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Lorelei (a.k.a. Rory) – she is nineteen and an artist. She had been homeschooled as a kid and just wanted to move out on her own for the first time even though she was close with her parents. She was planning a solo trip to Florence, Italy but hasn’t decided yet how to tell her parents, who were a bit too involved in her life. Her parents were mage’s. Her dad’s specialty was healing, and her mom is an empath that can manipulate emotions. Though Rory was adopted, so she doesn’t feel special like them. She considers herself a nary (ordinary).

The Story: a bunch of people broke into Rory’s house and killed her parents. They grab Rory and tell her it is ok, that she won’t have to stay there anymore, and they were taking her home before knocking her out. She wakes up in the back of a limo, where she finds out that her pet mouse could speak and is her familiar. She is told that her parents and her familiar are joymancers and the people that took her are fearmancers. Joymancers take their magic from joy and fearmancers take theirs from fear. They have a school called Bloodstone University, which is known as villain academy or Blood U, which is where she is being taken.

The Heroes: Declan, Malcom, Jude, and Connor – they are the four scions of Bloodstone University. They are each from one of the five royal families of dark magic, the fifth being the Bloodstones. They find out that Rory is the long-lost heir of the Bloodstones. Declan’s parents were murdered in the same event where Rory was taken by the Joymancers. Her biological parents also died in that same incident.

This was a strange story, since Rory was a nice girl who tended to stand up for those weaker than herself. But in the world of the fearmancers, the strong used the weak to instill fear and grow their own magic. Which meant that Rory had to fight against her own morals to get her magic. The strongest in the school were the other four scions and they were good at getting fear out of the other students. Which means they weren’t nice guys. They wanted to get Rory on their side to stand with them as a scion, but she wasn’t so willing to change.

The guys weren’t all bad, in a way they had been bred to be the way they were. Even their parents instilled fear in them from a young age as a way to make them strong. They had to learn to defend against other fearmancers trying to build their own magical abilities through creating fear in them. So, their entire lives have been about protecting themselves against fear and intimidation and creating fear in others. Quite a crazy life, and Rory didn’t understand that since she didn’t grow up that way.

The storyline in each of these books is good, though my biggest criticism of this series is that it moves way too slowly. The series is eight books, and it really should have been pared down to just four. It took so long for anything to really happen that it got boring at times. Also, I hate series about one couple or reverse-harem romances about one heroine take longer than 3 or four books to get through. I definitely won’t be reading the last four books, because I don’t want to wait that long to find out what happens.

This audiobook was told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Stephen Dexter and Meg Sylvan. Meg Sylvan has a great voice and is completely natural sounding as she narrates. She also sounds age appropriate for Lorelei. Stephen Dexter has a nice deep, yet soft voice and is great at using different voices for different characters.

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