We Lie With Death (The Reborn Empire book 2) by Devin Madson

Thank you to Orbit Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. Both We Lie With Death, and We Ride the Storm (book one) are available now. You can find my review of We Ride the Storm here.

After reading and loving We Ride the Storm, I had ridiculously high expectations for We Lie With Death. I thought, “How can the follow up be as good as the first book?”. Devin Madson is a phenomenal writer, that’s how. This book is freaking incredible.

We Lie With Death picks up right after We Ride the Storm and doesn’t pause for a minute. While the pacing is different, there is never a dull moment. There are revelations, new points of view, and plenty of the intrigue that I so love to read. While having multiple points of view in books can sometimes be problematic, Madson handled each one skillfully and kept the characters’ personalities from meshing into each other.

The world building was incredible, of course, with even more being shown and developed. But where I thought We Lie With Death shines is in the relationships between the characters. There were dynamics being shown and explored that had me completely sucked in. It changed how I viewed the characters and showed off just how nuanced they all are.

Rah was my favorite in We Ride the Storm, but he slipped a little in this book. His stubbornness kind of annoyed me. Instead, it was Cassandra that kept me riveted throughout. Her relationship with Hanna was interesting to say the least. They are opposite in many ways and it just…worked.

I’m not going to say too much about the plot, for fear of giving something away. Suffice to say, it was layered and fascinating. The reader was given some answers (and a few more questions). As with book one, I will say that this is on the harsher side of fantasy.

There really isn’t a thing that I would change about the book. We Lie With Death is a fantastic book and a worthy follow-up to one of my favorite reads from last year.