Lord of the Fading Lands

Lord of the Fading Lands - C.L. Wilson Originally posted at WickedLilPixie Reviews
“The tairen and the Fey are dying. You are the last bridge between our two species. You told me the Eye of Truth sent you here, to Celieria, to find our salvation. We both know it can be no coincidence that Ellysetta is your truemate. Somehow, she is the key to saving us all.” – Marissya the Truthspeaker

Rainier vel’End Daris Feyreisen, Rain Tairen Soul, is a twelve-hundred-year-old King of the Fey who has the unique ability to turn himself into a black-furred and winged tairen. He’d once nearly destroyed the world in a rage of anguish and has been in exile since the Mage Wars a thousand years ago. He accompanies the shei-dalin (Truthspeaker) Marissya v’En Solande on her annual visit to the town of Celieria and is immediately drawn to Ellysetta Baristani – described as the odd, unattractive and unwed adoptive daughter of a woodcarver. At first he senses and is lured to her strong emotions of turmoil. Once he comes close to her during his entourage’s arrival into town, he immediately knows that Ellie is his shei’tani, or truemate. Never in recorded history had a Tairen Soul claimed a truemate. He also recognizes her as the same woman in the image The Eye of Truth showed him in his desperate plea to save his Fey land and people and is the ultimate reason The Eye of Truth sent him to Celieria. But as Rain and and Ellie are introduced, Kollis Manza watches the interaction steeped in concealing magic and realizes that Ellie’s tairen-flame hair and green eyes resemble those of a child who was stolen from the High Mage of Eld more twenty-four years ago…

Lord of the Fading Lands is the first novel in C.L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul series and is the first true Fantasy book I have delved in to. At first, the hero, Rain, was so freaking uncouth. He’d been in isolation for a thousand years and had no idea how to handle human interaction. He was also initially very much not interested in caring about someone and being responsible for someone. He comes across as a total ass. Ellie is scared to death of Rain and that is not about to change anytime soon. She really does not want him sticking around, no matter how dreamy and fantastical his truemate claim is. Marissya is a very strong secondary character. As a lifelong friend to Rain she knows what to say to him to get him to bend his instinctive ways in order to woo Ellie. Each character has so many names and titles, C.L. Wilson does a very good job at slowly easing you in to all the names and positions instead of dumping it all one you. The characters are slowly unraveled and unlayered as you move along with the story and that made for a great story. Since this story is Fantasy, every single thing is rooted in another world with no hint of anything in our urban every day life. There are no points of reference to modern life at all and it became pretty intense for me to imagine it all. And yet, still there were characteristics of this book that I’ve come to love in the Paranormal Romance genre. The hero is what you would call in UF/PNR as a shifter. He is constantly fighting his other half, the tairen, who is demanding to take over and work with a different set of instincts.

I thought the writing was really well-done. I feel as though I was a hard-sell going in to this and ended up being so pleasantly surprised with how enchanted I was by Lord of the Fading Lands. The overall story dragged for me in the middle, I was really read for more action to happen – at times I found myself saying this is the longest courting everrrrr – but the pace picked back up again towards the last quarter. I would definitely like to keep up with this series.

Here is a series list for Tairen Soul series:

Lord of the Fading Lands
Lady of Light and Shadows
King of Sword and Sky
Queen of Song and Souls
Crown of Crystal Flame