The Empire Wars

The Empire Wars #1

by Akana Phenix

The Empire Wars is an award-winning, exciting feminist Hunger Games-inspired novel where survival and magic are a deadly mix.

Coa, who was born feral in the North Transatlantic wilds, has just been captured. Now, Coa is subject to public humiliation and execution in a gruesome spectacle known as The Great Hunt.

If participants die in the Great Hunt their entire family will be executed—in front of everyone. The nationalist regime, known as the Allied Force, will not rest until all foreigners are exterminated. Coa’s best hope of survival might be Princess Ife—born of privilege, but newly married into the authoritarian lineage.

Her riskier choice is an alliance with a gorgeous, cunning fellow participant, marked as a traitor to his militarized nation. Coa entangles herself with the captivating young man, but soon finds he could be her ultimate downfall…

Genres: Fantasy, Dystopia, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Audiobook, Fiction, Young Adult Fantasy

466 pages, Paperback

First published July 30, 2024

About the author

Akana Phenix is an award-winning Harvard alum, author, and screenwriter. She loves reading translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in her spare time. She is a nostalgic 2000s kid, a film fanatic, and a fan of the Office. She’s based in the United States.

Reviews

[Cindy Pham]

happy book birthday to the empire wars!! 🎉🎉 excited to get my hands on this book and see how the story combines fantasy, sci-fi, and social commentary together. dare i say dystopia is BACK 👀

[Clace · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.75!

I dont really have much to say on this because honestly I forgot most of the things about this book but know that I started this book on the 1st week of January but as an audiobook and although I was somewhat enjoying it, it quickly lost my interest and it dragged so much. With how amazing the premise was I was so hyped for it but it just didnt deliver.

The characters were just there but I honestly didnt really feel much for them and thats the same for the plot of the story, overall this book felt very distant like I could not connect to the story at all so it was just not for me :(
___
This sounded so interesting and the cover reminded me of Red Rising and I got an audio arc a while back so im excited to dive into this.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Blackstone publishing for the arc.*

[Reads With Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

i wasnt expecting all that, goddamn

(transparency: i'm pals with the author and i'm in the acknowledgements of this book. this doesnt affect my review, but i value consumers having all the info they can in order to decide on their purchases)

[cowy]

I saw this pitched as GET OUT meets HUNGER GAMES and we all need this book NOW

[Mai H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Black History Month 2025 #2

Hot take: Maybe Cait Corrain knew what was up when she shat on all of these books

No plot. Characters coming out of nowhere. The acknowledgements say this was written in high school. I believe it.

Look. I love to shit on white people. Especially with other BIPOC women. But if you're going to culturally appropriate white people, do it correctly. The Dutch was wrong. The Russian was wrong. The Swedish was wrong.

How many ways can we describe green eyes (badly)?

🌵 doe-like green eyes
🌵 field-green eyes
🌵 ice-green eyes
🌵 pale-green eyes
🌵 sea-green eyes
🌵 slate-green eyes
🌵 storm-green eyes
🌵 verdant eyes

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing

[Connie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars
So much potential!

While I appreciate the intriguing concept, I found that the story didn't flow seamlessly and there was quite a bit of info dumping. Despite a strong start, I struggled to fully engage with the novel.

Overall, not for me.

***Thank you to NetGalley, Akana Phenix, and Blackstone Publishing for graciously sending me the audiobook to review. As always, all thoughts are my own.***

[Chelsea · Rating 1 out of 5]

ARC received from Netgalley.

I'm so, so sorry to say this--but the book is bad. Really bad. It needed a LOT more developmental editing, and I hope it got it before going to publication; I only got the ARC the day before publication and it took me a couple of days to get through it. I think the problems can be broadly broken into three main categories: the worldbuilding, Coa, and Ife.

The Worldbuilding
This world--which is, I should say, our world makes no sense. Phenix lays out a structure in which, for some reason, every country except the United States and the UK has become some other country entirely, and some random people from the Artic (but NOT indigenous people from the Arctic) called the Allied Forces (who are they allied with? literally no one, it just one big group) have taken over everything except the USA/UK alliance. How did we get to this point? METEORS. Yup. That's the whole explanation. Well, not really. Phenix does a LOT of info dumping in this book, for pages upon pages at a time, but none of it actually makes sense, and every time she tries to explain something, it just makes everything make less sense. Honestly, this book would have been much better suited to a second-world setting, because then she could have just scrapped all of the attempts at "how did we get here" and could have leaned much more on a "this is the way the world is" logic. There is also an attempt at having magic in this book, which isn't super well-done, and also with the exception of one in every eight million people, all magic belongs to indigenous African and Inuit communities (there is much more emphasis on the African magic than the Inuit magic, though the Inuit magic is mentioned in the background of one minor supporting character) which...seems to really lean into the whole "African mysticism" stereotype and seems problematic. (It is worth noting that Ife, our only main character with African origins, does NOT have magical abilities of her own.) A second-world setting could have alleviated some of the "what do you mean there's magic involved here" of the whole book as well. Phenix definitely could have had a second-world setting while still drawing on the horrors of various genocides in our world to make a point.

There's also the whole setup of the Great Hunt, where the Allied Forces send "foreigners" (aka anyone who is not them) into an area to be shot at by AF snipers over seven days, all while the foreigners do Hunger Games-esque things to each other to try to get ahead. Why? Who knows. In this particular iteration of the Great Hunt, the Hunt is taking place on an African island that is...cursed? Hexed? Alive with magic? Unclear. It is a SEVERELY UNDERUTILIZED setting. There is setup that the island can be bargained with after making an appropriate sacrifice; nothing ever comes of this. There is setup that a giant typhoon is going to come and wreak havoc on the place; nothing is ever done with this. The typhoon DOES come, but only in the sense that main character Coa says "Oh it was really bad and took a while to pass," with "a while" being less than 24 hours. The typhoon could have been utilized as really dramatic set-dressing for a final climactic encounter, but no.

Coa
Coa is one of the two main characters, and the one that is introduced first in the book. She is a prisoner in a forced labor camp run by the Allied Forces. She is one of the people being forced to compete in the Great Hunt, and she wants to survive the Great Hunt because if she dies as part of it, her entire family will be executed as well. She can also breathe fire and shoot lightning out of her hands even though she has no apparent connections of any of the communities that have magic in this book.

Coa's story makes no sense from the start. We NEVER find out how she ended up in this labor camp. Early on it seems like there is going to be a bit of a dual timeline for Coa, with the Great Hunt story taking up the "present" portion and a "how did we get here" timeline for the past, but that ends pretty quickly with Coa and her adoptive family deciding they want to run away from Hallowell, their native country, for the United States. We never see them actually enact this plan or find out how they got caught by the Allied Forces and end up in a labor camp off the coast of Africa (which part of Africa is never specified, just that it's tropical). Note that I said Coa's ADOPTIVE family. This is a big plot hole. I am a big proponent of found family stories, but it doesn't work here because Coa's ENTIRE STATED MOTIVATION for the entire book is that if she dies, her family will be killed. However, there is no indication of how the AF would ACTUALLY KNOW they are her family. She's literally asked if she has family early on by the AF, she says no, and they believe her. There is mention of DNA tracking being how they enforce family kill orders, but Coa's family is not biologically related to her, and so that won't work. So how does her being in the Great Hunt actually endanger them? Also, she says they'll all be killed if she dies but she literally starts off the book by telling a soldier to kill her, she doesn't care, which doesn't really set her up as a smart person to root for throughout the book. And then at the end, she's saying she's ready to die during the Great Hunt, apparently forgetting her entire stated motivation of protecting her family. She never, ever makes a single smart or strategic decision. Ever. Also, her magic (breathing fire and shooting lightning from her hands) supposedly comes at the cost of burning her lungs and throat, and will eventually kill her. I say "supposedly" because she uses her magic at various points in the book with none of these consequences. They don't show up until about 80% of the way through, when it heightens the drama in one specific encounter for them to show up. All the other instances, she walks away from her magic usage with no consequences of it at all.

Ife
Ife, at first blush, seems to hold more promise than Coa as a character. She is Makarian, which is one of the made-up countries in Africa and the only one that has magic. But Ife doesn't have magic. She is also a princess, and is married to Maximus Stormbane, who is the heir to the Allied Forces. How did Ife end up here? WE NEVER FIND OUT. She says her own family hates her for not having magic and TRIED TO KILL HER until she ran away TO THE ARCTIC (where, as a reminder, EVERYONE WOULD WANT TO KILL HER TOO FOR NOT BEING ARCTIC HERSELF), and then she apparently...lived in the wilderness for three years until she randomly turned up at a Makarian embassy and got married to Maximus? Absolute nonsense. Logic? Fleshed-out backstory? Never heard of it. Ife supposedly married Maximus because she intends to assassinate him and wanted the insider access being his wife would give her. Ife never, at any point in this entire book, makes any move to kill Maximus OR to prepare to kill him, in any way, which ultimately renders her entire character as kind of pointless. I kept waiting for her to DO something...but she never did.

Final Thoughts
Phenix states in the author's note section that she wrote her first draft of the book when she was a sophomore in high school...and honestly, I think that explains a lot. This very much reads like a book that was written by a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old. She tries to tackle topics like genocide that her writing just doesn't have the maturity to do well. Let's be honest; would most of us want the world to read something we wrote in high school? PROBABLY NOT, because it was more than likely REALLY BAD. This is not a knock against Phenix specifically, but just that teenagers are generally not amazing novelists because they haven't had the time to develop the skills that go into writing a really great novel. A really good developmental editor could have helped with this, with giving the book structure, cleaning up the worldbuilding, and solidifying character motivations and actions, but despite an editor being listed and thanked, it really does not feel like that high-touch development happened. I kept reading even though I wanted to DNF early on because I kept thinking that SURELY there was going to be some twist or reveal that was going to make everything click together, but that just never happened. I have no interest in reading further books in this series after how bad this one was, but hopefully by the time Phenix gets to her next story, whatever that may be, she will have the experience and maturity to draft a stronger story to start with, and the editorial support to make sure it truly shines. I wish her the best.

[Akana Phenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hello, I am the author, Akana Phenix. Due to another author(s) secretly harassing my book and committing other racist actions, I had to restart here on Goodreads with a new book account and leave a message. If you see random accounts leaving racial slurs, or 1 star-review bombing, please report. My book is not out yet to the public, and Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) are unavailable, therefore those reviews are fakes.

THE EMPIRE WARS will be release 07/30/2024.
Thank you for your help.

Important Update: I don't check Goodreads. However, I respond to author emails and my apologies for the late response time! I expanded on this question in my Goodreads Author Q & A as well email. I will answer the question here for future readers to avoid confusion. Otherwise, please ask via Author Q & A. (I will try my best to be timely!)

The Allied Force is not a nation in Europe. For The Empire Wars, I re-imagined the North Pole, since no country owns the northernmost point of the Earth, and it is governed by international law. The Allied Force is located within the Arctic Circle, like the real Northern Hemisphere.

Thank you everyone for your support. Now, it is time for me to block the Goodreads page again for readers to enjoy. I love you! ❤️

[Charlotte Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this as it was the book chosen for my new book club and if not for that simple fact, I never would have finished it. This book was bizarre in one of the worst ways I've ever had the opportunity to witness. I'd like to just say it was bad, that it was a book I just personally didn't mesh with, so I'll move on from it, but the levels in which this book managed to shock and offend me by being published in the first place, needs to be addressed.

First off, it needed development. The jumps between voice and time and dialogue were just so non sensical. There was so much promise at the start and even at points in the middle, but it just never lifts off in the way the blurb implies/promised.

What I was able to get from this is that the world is currently in a post war time environment where, what appears to be Russia has taken over the world and is now known as the Allied Force. This has happened because of a meteor crashing I think and some other stuff that’s not quite clear. We’re not sure who the Allied Force are allied with or against, since it seems that they literally have control over the entire world already so who exactly are they fighting. The UK and the US are known as the Transatlantic Empire but don’t really do much in the novel or the world it seems, so not sure why this distinction is made. Anyway, the Russian Nazis rule the world and in a weird twist of things, they were actually the most interesting thing throughout as the writer seemed to have really fleshed out who they were and their motivations for world domination. How they condition their men into soldiers, how they view the world, how the main Hitler guy High General Stormbane rules was so sinister. I enjoyed reading the dynamic of he and his family, especially his sons Maximus and Vorian, but we’ll get to that.

The book take place during an event called the Great Hunt in which the oppressed are forced to take part in a Hunger Games type event which is televised and everyone watching thinks isn’t real. Our main character, Coa is stressed because if she doesn’t win the game – it’s not clear how – her whole family will be killed. The massive problem with this is that Coa’s family is adopted and therefore she has no blood relation to them. This means, that despite DNA tracking being the reason as to how the AF could find her family, this wouldn’t in fact work since they have no DNA in common. In addition to this, at the very start of the book, Coa actively says she is willing to die when one of the soldiers corners her. If that’s the case, then what are the stakes and why are you fighting so hard in the Great Hunt to save your family? Its contradictory and downright stupid. At one-point shes even asked by some bad guys whether she has family and she simply says no and they just… believe her. So how are they ever in danger?
Coa is in this position ultimately because she is in a labour camp but its never made entirely clear how she got there. She seems to have been some kind of feral child in a human zoo with no verbal communication but by the time we meet her, she’s perfectly understandable. She is also meant to have some kind of lightning magic that after being mentioned, doesn’t play any major part in the story. She mentions there being some kind of price to pay for using but this but its never paid as she uses them at two convenient points in the book and nothing happens to her because of it so why not use it to kill everyone around you?

Speaking of killing people, this brings us onto the second main character/POV from a girl called Ife. Ife is ethnic, the only ethnic in the whole book it seems and she is married to the son of the Allied Forces, a perfect soldier named Maximus. Although magic is supposed to originate in Africa, the only African descendent in the book has no magic of her own. However, I will say that Maximums and Ife were the most entertaining for me as I was the most invested in their pseudo romance and the complexity of their relationship. On the one hand, she spends her time saying she is going to kill Maximus and bring down the Allied Force but its not shown how and at no point does she in fact, try to kill him. She spends most of her time saying she doesn’t care for him while showing that she does in fact care for him and sleeping with him. I guess it’s meant to show how she has to do what she must to survive but since she seems to have willing run to safety with this man and his family – which makes no sense since they’re her mortal enemies and of course is never explained – it reads hollow. She says she ran to him when she was thirteen and married him when she was fifteen. How? Why? To broker peace amongst AF and foreigners. That doesn’t seem to be happening when foreigners are still treated like shit, Ife included.

The book was given an extra star however, simply for the ending in which Ife and Maximus play the biggest part. I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming in such a way. It was truly shocking and exciting and had it been more like that throughout the book/from the start, then it might have been great. The points that led up to it were so well woven into what was happening that while it came out of nowhere, you did realise that the clues had been laid beforehand. Where it was let down is that because there was so much other bullshit in and around it, you didn’t realise that these things were in fact important, and not just Ife being repetitive.

Lastly, I will point out that I understood this was a book with black and brown characters but everyone was blonde haired and blue eyed. Maybe there were some lines crossed here but I was so confused by this and even more so by the image of the author themselves who I’m not sure if they’re even a real person. Im not one to scream AI from the rooftops but coupled with how this book ever got printed, it just doesn’t feel remotely like this is a real person or serious book.

[Osi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was...something. I really tried to get into it. I really really tried. Too much info dump, characters all over the place with their motivations and traits. Reminded me of Handbook for Mortals in the execution.

I thought this book was about or had POC characters, but almost every main character has white skin, blue/green eyes, and/or blond hair. What's up with that? Maybe I missed something.

Also, the alternate benevolent government shown to have existed before the genocidal maniacs took over was headed by people with wealth and status watching over the poors. Apparently, they really knew how to run countries fairly. Bro. The infantilization of poor and disadvantaged people happening in this book is very icky, and that was what ultimately made me not like this book enough to write a review here.

Not telling you not to read but beware. I see some people liked it and even loved it. Good for them, maybe you will like/love it too. I'm an equal opportunity reader, and this time, this book was not for me. Maybe it will be it for you. Merry good reads.

[Mariana ✨]

THIS SYNOPSIS?????? IT SOUNDS SO GOOD LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO

"Are you worth killing for?
Are you worth dying for?

A feral girl named Coa has lived her entire life raised by the wild and knowing no other existence. But when her family is captured by a brutal military regime, Coa is thrust into a deadly game of survival and strategy known as the Great Hunt.
Coa must rely on her instincts and primal skills to survive—only winners free their captive families.
But in this militarist nation, infamous for widespread genocide, if that family member dies in the Hunt—their entire family will be executed next.
Coa only has one chance.

Dive into the thrilling world of THE EMPIRE WARS where HUNGER GAMES meets GET OUT in this breathless, heart-pounding debut."

[C Miken · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book reads as though the manuscript was thrown into a blender and then stuck back together with tape, leaving a good quarter of it lost or as pulpy remnants in the bottom of the appliance. There is no good reason for why this book begins where it does except for cheap shock value and then chapter after chapter is spent trying to walk backwards and explain how we got here. It's a bad J.J. Abrams mystery box except half of the questions don't even get answered despite the innundation of info dumps.
The info dumps don't even really help because a lot of the info is contradictory. Like we're told that one character grew up in isolation but then we hear how others treated her and also that she watched movies, huh? Or that the Allied whatever force every person to go into the military, but then there are actresses? Huh? And it isn't that just men get conscripted, because it then says that the men like actresses because they aren't frigid like the ones in the army.
Things are made so unnecessarily complex and confusing, like I can't even tell you why the hell the weigh in was done. It's basically the part of Hunger Games where they give you a score and Katniss gets the 11 or whatever, but here we're told they strip naked, get weighed, and then ~somebody~ tells then how long they're gonna last based on ~reasons~. Now, why are they stripping naked this time when that normally isn't a thing? Why is Coa simultaneously fearful that her entire family gets murdered but also wanting the people to shoot her? Why is she talking about dying with dignity when it seems like there isn't even a choice? Why is it a shock that the one Slavic twin gets pulled into this again? What was thr alternative? I COULD NOT TELL YOU. Information just gets tossed about seemingly as the author thought it up and then they just never went back to edit this beast and so any hope or wish for good pacing and well explained world building is out the window.
It is all just simultaneously overwritten and underexplained that I frankly found it to be infuriating. We get page after page after page of info that doesn't really matter to the story here and is just telling us about the world at large, while basic things like, what the fuck is this Great Hunt or why are there tourists here when everyone in the Allied Forces is in the army or being actively beat up by thrle Allied Forces so who the hell are you people? It feels like the author read Hunger Games and was like, but what about the rest of the world? Where is Estonia in all of this?? So they went and wrote that, not realizing that is doesn't fucking matter to Katniss what the hell is happening in Estonia when she's starving to death!
That brings me to my other main issue which is the fact that Coa somehow thinks like a 20 something with a liberal arts degree when she spent her entire life barely scraping by. How does she know so much about history and political structures when Miss Ma'am was working 23 hours a day? And why the hell does she care about the princess? She's all ready to get herself shanked to help princess princess when, I'm sorry, but if I was a starving peasant, I'd be a tad more concerned with the "not starving" part of my daily routine and less concerned with the "foreign princess I don't even know is being a huge idiot right now". Different political structures are also propped up as being ideal, immaculate edifices just... no. Democracies can be sources of discrimination and intolerance too, y'know? I mean *looks out the window circa September 2024 in America* *sees everything on fire* democracy has plenty of it's own issues. It feels a bit childish to be waxing poetically about how amazing democracy is, and also, WHY DOES COA KNOW THIS??? GIRL IS EATING DIRT FOR DINNER! HOW DOES SHE KNOW WHAT DEMOCRACY IS???
The abusive conditions which non-Allied Forces people are put under is also just... ridiculous. It feels cartoonish and over the top. Now I think that there's a fine line that authors have to walk and decide if their representation of real world issues is going to undersell it or oversell it. For example, The Handmaid's Tale is an extreme that would probably, hopefully, *cough* Project 2025 *cough* never come to fruition. But the genius in that is that some times things in The Handmaid's Tale will come eerily close to real life and things we see today. So we see this far flung impossible world, but then they start talking about banning birth control and how cat ladies are the Bane of society, and we're struck by how close this seemingly impossible world comes to our own. We see how our own society can be extreme or unreal. On the other hand, some stories are best told as underexaggerations of what has happened. For example, The Grapes of Wrath (wow look at me, so pretentious) isn't doom and gloom all the time, there are moments of joy. Additionally, Steinbeck visited tenet farmer camps to write a more accurate portrayal of their lives, giving to story a more grounded feeling. You read The Grapes of Wrath and feel that these are real people with varied lives and experiences and you feel sympathy for them and what they're going through. If the book was all bad all the time and the stuff that was happening to them was over the top ridiculous, then it'd be easy to dismiss as fiction and go on your day because there's no way that could be true.
The Empire Wars tries to straddle both of these likes, being overexaggerated in it's portrayal of an oppressive regime, while also trying to talk about real world genocides. But when you read about people cleaning floors with tooth brushes and getting 2 hours of sleep, it feels satirical. It also feels like the Allied Forces have literally nothing better to do than fuck with these people. I mean, that isn't impossible, I know what Famine Walls are, but it seems like a waste of resources to have your vast supply of cheap labor cleaning floors with toothbrushes. Like y'all don't need people to build weapons or sew uniforms for your infinite army? No? Don't need caregivers for the children of your 100% conscription rate population? Don't need food prep? Nothing? Seriously? It just feels like the author is throwing in every ridiculous and impractical thing they can imagine and thus undermine the part of the book where its meant to being attention to historical genocides and cruelties. If I can't take your dystopia government seriously, then how can you expect for me to learn about others with a level of maturity and openness?
There's also the part where the games make no sense because what point is there to them? Like I get the hunting humans for sport - that's what I do every Thursday night - but why the murdering their entire families and stringing them up on twine part? You guys are going to be running out of families at this rate. And what message is this meant to impart? Don't have families because then your shitty child will get you all killed? How do your labor camps keep operating if you kill everyone and nobody has children? Are they just hoping to kill the whole world and then expect their sergeants to start picking up cleaning bathrooms with toothbrushes? This feels like a snake eating it's own tail situation.
Overall, this book needed to be savagely shredded up, the pieces rearranged to give us a modicum of sense instead of this timelike jumping around BS, the unimportant info dumps discarded, and just the important meat of the issue focused on. I just think the author worked on this book for too long and added too much that it went past the breaking point and reaching the situation where you feel like you've been cornered by someone at a party explaining their hyper fixation on rabbits to you for 3 hours (it's me, I'm the weirdo with the rabbit hyper fixation). And while I appreciate the author's intentions, the flawed execution leaves much to be desired and does little to convincingly address their topic.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hold on to something because there is a LOT going on in The Empire Wars, but it absolutely works! So strap in! Coa has just been captured and is going to be subjected to a violent game (?) called The Great Hunt where people are massacred for the entertainment of the ruling class. But if you survive, your family is safe...until the next one. Meanwhile, Princess Ife, from a conquered African nation, is married to the chief sniper, and is determined to take down the empire from the inside. But can Ife or Coa survive long enough to reach their goals? This brutal YA future dystopian story is chock full of action and violence, all wrapped around an extremely compelling narrative that doesn't sound quite so far fetched.

There's a lot of telling instead of showing in this books and usually I don't like that. But there's so much going on and backstory here that it's necessary. Not only that, but it's interesting. Is there a sequel to this? If there is, I'm in!

[Courtney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm honestly astounded this made it through editing. I know it's a YA, but good grief was this written by a 12 year old? Needlessly convoluted, unclear, with bizarre character behavior and motivations. Nobody acts or speaks like a real human being. There's so much exposition crammed inside of conversations that what little flow there might be is stunted by a paragraph and a half of information that contradicts information from a previous expositional paragraph.

Normally I can find something to like. This is just... irredeemable.

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t wait to read this! Adding stars early to help the author rebuild her account after all of the racist bullshit recently.

[The Page Ladies Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book yesterday it has 464 pages I started reading at 1127pm and it's now 1136am and I have finished it! Wow! Just wow! Lol! There is a lot going on in this world! There's a lot going on! There's a lot of history about the world and each character but it is so entertaining and you can't help but want to know more and then you have the current events and you absolutely want to know what will happen next! I can't wait for the next book and to find out what will happen next! Thank you Bibliolifestyle, Akana Phenix and William Morrow Books for sharing this wonderful story with me!

[Pine Reads Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Zero time remaining. You may begin hunting.”

The Empire Wars, the first book in Akina Phenix’s breakout series, follows two girls as they attempt to survive the Allied Force, a nationalist government well into their mission of taking over the world. Coa Rangecroft grew up wild, learning to survive with little and less before she and her family were captured and placed in a labor camp run by the military. Ife Størmbane, former princess of the now decimated Makarian civilization, has married the infamous Sniper General. Tensions rise as the annual Great Hunt looms, a gruesome show in which foreigners are forced to fight for their lives amongst seventy five others, all while being hunted down by the Empire’s most prized snipers. The punishment for dying is the execution of one’s entire family. While Coa attempts to survive against desperate participants on a hostile island, Ife must masquerade as a patriotic citizen amongst people who hate her very existence.

Akana Phenix has created a world that delves into genocides, focusing on the fortitude of individual victims that are caught in the crossfire of a hostile government that only cares for power. The dual perspectives of Coa and Ife allow for insight into greatly different sides of the macabre actions of the Allied Force, against both their own people and foreigners. Coa and Ife fight for the people they care about yet the circumstances of their lives are totally estranged, not only in their pasts but also in their current situations. Coa fights to live another day, while Ife’s attentions are focused on avenging her family. Both are horrified by the Great Hunt and the atrocities involved but on different sides of the chaos and with different roles in society. I found myself fascinated by the portrayal of these characters, their contrasting roles—one has magic but lacks a position of power, while the other has the right position but no magic of her own. The presence of magic was not something I was expecting, but I was delighted to read how Phenix incorporated this magic system into a story with high dystopian elements and characters desperate to survive. Akana Phenix has designed a complex world with tantalizing twists that build in intensity and don’t stop until the very last word.

Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for sending us an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change before final publication.

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[Linda Steiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

So excited to see this author's take!! I will definitely put this on my daughter's TBR list. Please keep going.

[Rayna Moreschini · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Empire Wars represent a brutal debut into dystopian fiction. Set against the back drop of a futuristic Earth, largely conquered by the Allied Forces of the Arctic, the story follows two women from different marginalized backgrounds, using every tool they have to survive and protect the people and nations they love.

Phenix contrasts the chillingly callous military progress of the Allies with the visceral hereditary magic of the Makari peoples in a way that highlights the horrors of colonialism and dehumanization. She weaves a sense of dread and anticipation through each chapter and quietly foreshadows that, as bad as things are now, they're about to get so much worse.

I can't wait for the next book.

[Amanda Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I legitimately sat and stared into space for a good hour after I finished this. It has so many twists and turns and turns it blew my mind.

It explores genocide openly and rawly but digestible to an audience who may not find it a comfortable topic.

I loved it so much, it brought me back to when I first read hunger games.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Blackstone publishing for the eARC.

[Hayley Daniels · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this. It's really just ... not good.

[akacya ❦ · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024 reads: 234/250

disclaimer: i received a finished copy of the book from the publisher as part of a book tour hosted by bibliolifestyle. this did not affect my review/rating.

content warnings: genocide, racism, war

coa has been captured and subjected to public humiliation and potential execution as part of the great hunt, a gruesome spectacle held by the nationalist regime known as the allied force. if she doesn’t survive, neither will her family, so she has to find allies quickly.

while i haven’t seen this being compared to the hunger games, i do think this is one of the few books that deserve a comparison to it. a lot of hunger games comparisons have a deadly competition without the social commentary, but this had both. we get the perspectives of coa, a forced participant in the hunt, and princess ife, who comes from a conquered nation and is hoping to take the empire down from the inside following her marriage to a man who ranks high in the allied force. seeing these two different, yet similar, points of view helped put the whole story into perspective.

i highly recommend this book, and i can’t wait for the sequel!

[Ashleigh Geissert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book off of NetGalley, so thank you for letting me be an ARC reader for this one.

Overall rating: ⭐️⭐️
Plot:⭐️⭐️⭐️
Characters: ⭐️⭐️
Spice: 🌶️

I think this book had a lot of potential. It was an interesting idea with cool technology and magic and culture, but not enough relevant details were supplied and the details that were never related the three, so as the reader I was just so confused.

The main story follows the perspectives of Coa and Ife, one a foreign teenager that resides in the labor camps of the Allied Force and was selected to participate in the Great Hunt, and the other a foreign princess who married the all-admired Maximus Størmbane as a way to infiltrate the Arctic and bring their society down in revenge.

The author obviously has a vivid imagination, and certain scenes can be seen because of the detail. The problem is that there are quite a few inconsistencies and things that just don’t make sense. Two examples would be Coa says that she was nonverbal, raised feral until they were taken in by Whitelaw, but later she says that their older sister taught them words. Also, at the beginning of the book it mentions that Coa has a crippled foot but that she trained and now can run long distances like it doesn’t bother her. Multiple times her crippled foot is brought up but it never slows her down or seems to cause her pain or does anything for the story in general; just an unnecessary and confusing detail. Another thing is that Coa was raised in the south, and as if to prove that she will say “ain’t” at random times but not anything else that would point even remotely towards a southern heritage.

The world building again had a lot of potential; the author had a lot she wanted to say! I just felt like there was too much and it wasn’t connected in a clean way, so I was left guessing about things or rereading to see if I had missed some vital piece of information.

Some of the characters are ok, Ife was the only one I thought was pretty developed, though for all her talk about being smart she was painfully naive and unhelpful. She was a mostly good character though.

Coa seemed inconsistent, seeming at times to want to survive so she could save her family and then at other times thoughtlessly endangering herself and by extension her family.
Hazen was ok but again, it didn’t feel like he was totally developed. He was cocky and charming and then totally unfeeling and irritable. A traitor but also (SPOILER) working with the same people that put him in the hunt?
Bray was naive and unhelpful and soft and is likable but just makes some weird choices.

Also the Allied Force citizens all seem to think that the Great Hunt is some fake televised reality show where everything is staged, but some of them participate(???) and they are literally touring labor camps and see public executions, which didn’t add up.

I think the ingredients for a really cool story are all here, they maybe just need to be mixed up with a little more thought and the maybe spent a little longer in the oven (sorry for the cooking metaphor!).

I think this author has a lot of potential, and I think if the second book could provide clearer info with less plot holes and more connection between the elements of the story, I would read it!

[Vena Lore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really punches you in the face in a gritty, grounded way.

The Empire Wars honestly shouldn't be the name of this book as obviously what we're building towards is the aforementioned Empire War. But that's just a nitpick, the book is incredible. I have a lot to say both negative and positive,

First I won't lie, the first half if kinda a slog to get through, I actually ended up skipping the 3 chapters dedicated to Coa's backstory; I knew for a fact of life she and Hayzen Creed(I read the audio book, so forgive me if this isn't the correct spelling of his name) would have a conversation talking about their tragic backstories. And they did. Akana Phenix obviously really cares about Coa and thinks the details of her backstory are important; I don't disagree as I love a good feral child backstory. But it interrupts the flow and isn't nearly interesting enough to justify using 3 chapters to get through. After the first 50% this book kicks into overdrive and it becomes fantastic pacing wise.

Another thing is I think there needs to be a tighter understanding of the Great Hunt early on, because there's no mention of immunity or what happens to the winners until way later. There's one handed comment from Coa saying she still be forced to work for the Allied force but she would be able to leave with her family??? and yet Hayzen can only use his immunity on himself and not his family??? And in some of the promo it claims there can only be one winner but there's no mention of that in text, and no one seems to acts like that's the case other than Coa thinking she'll kill Hayzen if she has to. But it just seems like a week of the Deadliest Game(tm).

Ife's story is my favorite parts, from the voice they chose for the audio book, to her downfall arc. Believing she is mature, and politically savvy- sabotaging the Allied force from the inside. To seeing her fail and come to terms with how little she's actually done and how little she really knows- she is just a teenage girl afterall. Some insanely cool stuff happens in her POVs, a cool use of sci-fi tech and medicine and I won't spoil it but I was SHOUTING in my kitchen while cooking. It's so rad you will not regret it for the twists and turns of Ife's povs alone.

I have really so much to say I feel like I need to make a video essay or something before I write a novel about this novel. I haven't even touched on the politics, that feel real and scary in this day and age. A lot of it is incredibly on the nose and it isn't lost on me the German/Russian inspired Fascists are called the Allied Force. A real kick in the pants to the real life Allied Force as they continuously turn a blind eye to, or worse, enact genocide, ethnic cleansing, and destabilizing foreign nations for their own benefit. There's also illusions to the 'one drop' rule, as Coa is mixed and she remarks how despite being white passing and fits in the beauty standards with blond hair and green eyes, she will never be "white" to these people. And a lot of talk about masculinity in a violent culture that I thought was insanely compelling and was a selling point to me originally.

I highly recommend this, just. Just read it. It has it's flaws, yes, but it is worth the read anyways.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW!!! Those last three chapters??? 🤯 Review to come! ⚔️

(FINAL REVIEW:)

Holy moly how do I start this review? First of all, I’ll just describe it as if The Hunger Games were on steroids and if Katniss was totally down for war crimes like in The Poppy War. This book is not for the faint of heart and readers should really heed the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book. Okay, on to the review! 🫡

The story is set in a distant future where the world is taken over by the Allied Force who subjects all conquered countries to forced labor and genocide. I was slightly confused as to who the Allied Force are other than Arctic people (but not the indigenous people), but when you accept that they’re just a cold group of people hell bent on showing people how superior they are, it gets easier. ❄️

The two main POVs are Coa, a young woman surviving in a forced labor camp, and Ife, another young woman who is married to the second highest person in command. Coa reminds me of Katniss in a way that she is trying to survive in a world that’s set out to see her lose. She’s cautious and doesn’t trust anyone easily, but at times I thought she was a bit too naive for someone in her situation. I really enjoyed Ife’s character since it reminds me of Rin and how she tries to survive in an incredibly toxic environment. I can’t say more on her since it would be a spoiler, but I did find myself looking forward to her POV most often. 🦴

There’s more I wish I could say, but I’d be spoiling the whole book at that point. It’s brutal and really demonstrates how humanity can literally be its own worse enemy and repeat history. I do think it would’ve done a bit better as an adult series instead of pitched as older YA/NA, but that’s also because I’m still thinking unhinged teens is a bit of a stretch. But those last three chapters . . . 🤯

Big thank you goes out to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for accepting my request to read this in exchange for an honest review. And a shout out goes to the author, Phenix, for creating a KILLER (literal and figurative) debut! ❤️

Publication date: August 6!

Overall: 4.25/5 ⭐️

[Emma Lilienthal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Empire Wars is one of the most intense books I have read in a while. This book does have trigger warnings and does have quite a bit of gore so please check to see if anything will trigger you. This book has 2 very distinct points of view. With both of the pov’s, you learn more about how the government (the Allied Forces) is corrupt and brainwashed over 300 million people. It has action, forced alliances and forced relationships. There is a magic system but it’s not a main focus and is almost just a little bonus. The premise of the hunt was interesting and it definitely delivered. The island is absolutely horrible and scary. The lengths that the characters would go through to save their family highlights the pain that happens when they fail. I can’t wait to read the next book! Thank you to Blackstone Publishing for the arc through netgalley

[Shannon Miz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

Okay this is such a hard book to rate. And to review, but at least in the review I can more easily explain stuff. Look- this is not a perfect book by any stretch of the imagination (we'll get to that). There were times I was about to throw the thing across the room and call it quits. But then... there were also times I was completely captivated by the story, and would have bit you if you tried to take it from me. So let's just say it's... an experience.

For a brief summary: Coa, girl from island nation now forced into slavery, has been sent to the Great Hunt which is really just Hunger Games on crack. If she dies, her whole family dies. She doesn't even have any actual family so Idk how that works, but... it's fine. Bad stuff will happen. Princess Ife, who is from an African country and/or region that may or may not exist today. She is married to Corporal Baddie of the Arctic Asshat Army. He's the son of General Extra Baddie, Leader of the Arctic, and Ife thinks she can use her position in their inner circle to help save the world. We get to read from both of their perspectives.

I usually lead with the good parts, but in this case, the good parts came later, so I am going to start with the stuff I had trouble with.

►I don't get this world. At all, really. Like- you have your baddies, who in my head were like... if the cast of Frozen and Nazis had redneck babies? Or something? They claim to be "genetically superior" (which we all know baddies love to do, in fiction and in the real world). But then there is talk of them coming from all different places around the world so... which is it? And you might think that your typical Scandinavian folk would fit the bill, but you'd be really wrong because they don't like those guys either. Except for a few that they do. I have no idea. Most countries are gone but then not really, but maybe yes? And I think there is a country that is made up? Or maybe it fell off of the continental US? It claims to be a Florida-Louisiana sort of mix, but with mountains? I mean, if you told me we finally lobbed off Florida in the future, I wouldn't fight it, but that doesn't appear to be the situation. Then something about an asteroid comes into play and I guess asteroids explain all the new countries and groups and stuff, but not actually. In my head when I didn't understand how some random island popped into existence, I filled the gap with "Because Asteroids™" and it allowed me some peace. Until they started telling me that volcanic air dust let people live for three or more centuries, that is just silly.

►The political system, as you may have gathered, is confusing as well. And there is so much of it! This probably ties into the worldbuilding too but whatever. At some point, the characters just start ratting off random leaders of places that hadn't been mentioned. After one such tangent, I wrote in my Kindle "I thought... you know what nevermind" and just gave up. There are a ton of different factions at play, but it is very hard to keep track of them because, well, you can't even fully figure out where they come from, frankly.

►Holy contradictions! Legit in one line, Ife says someone is upset about being deaf: "Thorsten’s at the age where he desperately hopes he’ll recover his hearing, since the war obliterated...". Then not two sentences later she says "Above all, he loves being deaf." Um. Ma'am. I don't think that makes sense. Then like- one minute Coa is legit telling people to kill her already, and in the very next breath says she's ready to fight and kill everyone for her siblings. Who aren't her siblings, but that's a whole other Oprah. There's just a lot of that, and I hope some of it is worked out in editing.

But here's the weird part: despite the whole debacle, I actually... kind of liked the damn thing? And when I say "kind of", I mean "give me the sequel immediately I need answers". Idk what that says about me as a reader, but alas. Parts of it really worked! Like...

►Genocide and slavery are bad. I mean this should go without saying, but apparently a lot of people need this message. And boy, does this book deliver! Not only in the story, but I thought it was cool that the author used examples of real genocide and hate crimes to illustrate the point further. So from a commentary perspective, it delivered.

►I really felt for the characters, and even though they were at times contradictory, I quite liked them. Look- it's impossible to not feel bad for them, because they're literally being attempted-murdered through the whole book. And even before the killing rampages began, things were pretty awful for Coa.

►It is dark. Maybe akin to a train wreck that you can't look away from, I could not put this book down. I had to know what happened. (Well- after I got past the first quarter in which I was in danger of throwing things.)

►I was just completely invested in the outcome. Look, some things you just can't explain. And for better or for worse, by the time I got about a quarter of the way through, I was hooked. Don't get me wrong, I still found the inconsistencies and world building fully baffling. I just didn't quite care as much.

►Along the same lines, it was just very engaging. A lot was happening, and it was very twisty and exciting. And sure, a lot of the twists were very... The 100 Season 6, incredibly "Prime-y" in nature, but honestly that probably helped me like it more. And, I did not see most of the twists coming. Whether that is because they were extra twisty or because nothing makes sense I won't ever know, but suffice it to say, I was entertained.

Bottom Line: I cannot objectively give this more than three and a half stars, but the subjective part of me who was hooked refuses to give it any less. Do with that what you will.



You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

[Michele The Stick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Empire Wars is a dismal book. It exists in a world filled with so much abject horror that I am not sure it is worth saving. The Author failed to give the reader a singular moment of joy. Even in the flashbacks of childhood, of which there were many, it was all horrible. Every character in the novel is essentially tortured their whole life except one, who is presented as weak and unlikable, primarily due to the fact that he had a happy childhood. We didn't get to see any of his happy childhood, just the mockery of it.

There was a Science Fiction Element mixed in with the magic that was interesting. The technology and the magic were not fully explained and in some cases difficult to accept. I believe tear ducts are necessary for more than just showing emotions, but what do I know, maybe in this world of terror they are not.

The narration was fantastic. January LaVoy an Jesse Villinsky did an excellent job of ushering me through this book. At first I thought that Koa was a little too dramatic, but I honestly think that was the writing and not the delivery.

Look there is a lot that is good here, the world is interesting if not gruesome. The descriptions and character development were beautiful and complex. There are a few interesting twists. But I didn't have any fun with The Empire Wars and I didn't learn anything new. I was already aware that war is terrible, that people suck, and that violence leads to more violence.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had so, so much potential! The premise is solid - taking the horror of The Hunger Games and amping it up with the truths of real-life genocide. I truly did feel the terror and rage over the atrocities within the book that mirror our own reality. The characters are also interesting, all of them deeply flawed even if they are the "heroes" of the story.

My trouble with the book comes from the poor pacing and some of the choices made around certain plot points. There is a huge amount of info dumping in this book. The author spends too much time telling us about certain events instead of showing us. So much of the different characters' motivations are caused by things that happen off-page, and therefore, their choices and their growth don't leave as much emotional impact. We see very little of Coa with her family, and thus feel disconnected from her motivation to live for them. Ife claims to be dedicated to infiltrating the empire and yet makes numerous mistakes that should out her as a sympathizer and spy.

The switches between Ife and Coa's stories are jarring, leaving scenes to drag out. I was noticeably annoyed to leave one scene just as the action was picking up only to have to readjust to the other storyline. Also, the book's summary implies that the two girls' stories will cross paths, but save for one scene towards the beginning they never interact.

There is also a pretty big plot twist that gets dropped on us in Ife's storyline and feels like it came out of nowhere. It could have been an amazing twist if it had been built up to more. Instead, it feels out of place, adding another confusing layer to an already hefty plot.

Overall I was frustrated that this book didn't come together. It could be such a strong narrative that serves up the horrors of authoritarianism and genocide. I'm still interested to see where the story goes from here, but I hope that the author and their editors tidy up the writing and bring a more cohesive narrative.

[luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

gritty. gripping. unique in its sff narrative while recognizing real genocides. this book kept me intrigued, kept me caring, even when the characters weren’t my favorite. i finally know how everyone else felt about the hunger games. i got the feels on 2010s YA with so much important commentary and not a lot of the overachieving nature that i’m not a fan of in current YA.

the timeline though … makes no sense. i don’t know if there’s some incorrect timestamps that were caught in editing, or if there’s supposed to be some metaverse shit going on, but i was so confused going back and forth to see if i was missing something. just … ignore the timestamps. don’t think too hard about the worldbuilding (read: how we got to the point of the great hunt. idk girl. i’m just here for the ride).

don’t take a shot every time hazen’s green eyes change shades of green. be prepared to laugh when we’re suddenly getting a hairstyle description in the middle of a fight. be prepared to be so like “what in the HELL just happened” that you need the sequel. there BETTER be a sequel.