The Ruin’s Revenge by Sara Ivy Hill

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

He’ll ruin realms for her . . .

Skarr giant Alrek was one of the lucky ones. He had a mate—the very last female of their kind. Now the widowed chief of a dying clan, he has only two hopes for the saving as many other species as possible from the same extinction . . . and exacting revenge on the invasive humans who caused it.

But then she walks into his territory. Tiny. Sweet-smelling. Infuriatingly human.

At first, he just wants her off his land, so he escorts her home. But the more time he spends with the fascinating farmer, the less he can imagine his life without her in it. Can he reconcile his painful past and embrace a former enemy? Or will his need for revenge ruin any chance for love to grow again?

The Ruin’s Revenge

A giant dilemma!

This was a decent romance with some compelling elements, especially the character of Raina. A grounded and intelligent farmer, she’s dedicated to healing the land through sustainable techniques like crop rotation and resting the soil—a lovely metaphor for personal renewal. Her backstory with Gregor, a jilted ex-fiancé who now wields financial leverage over her, adds a layer of tension that drives the plot.

When her harvester breaks and she’s left unable to bring her crops to market, Raina ventures into the mountains, desperate for another solution. There, she encounters the Skarr giants—beings forced out of their homelands by human expansion. Among them is Alrek, the brooding, guilt-stricken leader haunted by the loss of his mate and his perceived failure to protect his people. Their meeting sparks a slow-burning, emotionally loaded connection.

The emotional themes are strong: grief, obligation, resilience, and cross-cultural healing. However, I still struggle with the central romance dynamic. After two books in this series, the sheer biological incompatibility between giants and humans remains a hard barrier for me to suspend disbelief. Love doesn’t have to hinge on physical intimacy, and I respect the narrative effort to portray emotional connection beyond sexual logistics—but the explicit attempts to address that incompatibility felt more distracting than romantic. Personally, I’d rather leave the “how” to the imagination.

Overall, The Ruin’s Revenge offers a heartfelt narrative with lush world-building, but your mileage may vary depending on how much suspension of disbelief you’re willing to grant the giant-human pairing. The audiobook was narrated in multiple perspectives in solo narration by Soren Gray. He has a good voice that I enjoyed, though I am not really a fan of solo narration.

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