I noticed something while reading-Do you agree?

[Karina]

As anyone noticed that if you read carefully the story is actually a post-apocalyptic world. They made many references to prove this.
1. .-------.".We walked on for a long way until Kaden finally stopped at one unassuming ruin, resting his hand on a tree that engulfed one wall like gnarled fingers. “This one used to reach higher than any tower inVenda.” “How would anyone know?” I looked at the partial walls that formed an enormous square. Trees grew atop the remains like twisted sentries. None of the actual remains were more than a dozen feet high anymore, and one wall was almost entirely gone. It seemed a fanciful notion to suppose that it once towered over the entire city. “It may have been only the walls of a manor,” I said. “It wasn’t,” Kaden said firmly. “It rose almost six hundred feet into the sky.” Six hundred feet? I grunted my disbelief. “Documents were found that confirm it. As best as they can decipher, this was a monument to one of their leaders.”--------Heart of Betrayal.....
---- The Washington Monument is said to be 555Ft tall. And if you look at the map of the country in Kiss of Deception, Venda is where Washington DC is. The Mississippi River is where the great River is.

2) They also talk about how ----"Once upon a time child, Long, long ago, Seven stars were flung from the sky. One to shake the mountains, One to churn the seas, One to choke the air, And four to test the hearts of men. A thousand knives of light, Grew to an explosive rolling cloud, Like a hungry monster. Only a little princess found grace, A princess just like you.…" ----Morrighan Novella----Asteroids! Like with the dinosaurs! Or Bombs!

3")------" a time when you could belong to one place forever. Ama had told me so, and sometimes I dreamed myself there. I dreamed myself to places I had never seen, to glass towers crowned by clouds, to sprawling orchards heavy with red fruit, to warm, soft beds surrounded by curtained windows. These were the places that Ama described in her stories, places where all the children of the tribe would be princes and princesses and their stomachs always full."--Morrighan Novella----- She is talking about citings like New York.

4)-------“They say the Ancients pulled metals more precious than gold from the center of the earth— metals they spun into giant lacy wings that flew them to the stars and back.”----Kiss of Deception----- Rockets, Spaceships, or planes.


Can you name other references to agree or disagree with this?

[Katelyn]

Whoa. I had not actually thought about that, but it makes a kind of sense. Whoa.

[CMG18]

Good observation!

[[deleted user]]

https://s2.netgalley.com/catalog/book...

[Nikki]

I totally agree! The first time I read the books I always wondered if it was actually post-apocalyptic and I've been re-reading them in preparation for The Beauty of Darkness coming out and now I'm fairly certain that the setting is a post-apocalyptic United States (or possibly North America in general).

I noticed in The Heart of Betrayal when Kaden takes Lia to see the ruins in Venda (page 126), she talks about the head of a statue which I'm pretty sure is the remains of the Lincoln Memorial because she also finds a piece of ruin that has the remnants of a word F REV R - presumably FOREVER which I'm fairly certain is a word on the Lincoln Memorial. That would definitely stick with your theory of Venda being where DC used to be.

I also think the City of Dark Magic might have been Las Vegas. There's no real clue to this, other than maybe its position on the map, but I just have an itching feeling lol!

I've also often wondered if the "seven stars" were a natural event like meteors or asteroids or if they were actually bombs.

Either way, I'm like 99.9% sure this is a post-apocalyptic setting rather than a fantasized world. Maybe there'll be some more clues in the next book.

[Karina]

yeah I noticed the city of dark magic but I wasn't sure if it was last vegas. so glad you agree. to me it seemed odd that she would called it that, like it was something important.

[[deleted user]]

I thought it was post apocalyptic way back in book one. They make several references to the Ancients having "magic" and "sparkling towers", and the stars. It wasn't until this book that I realized it must have been some sort of natural disaster- meteors, most likely. Not to mention the map inside the cover is EXTREMELY similar to a map of the US. The Sea of Akeri (looking at map) is about the same area as the Great Lakes, Reux Lau would be about Georgia. Florida could possibly have been submerged or the landscape altered from time or the "stars falling." Inferna-Terr is the northern-midwest, Cortenai is Washington/Oregon, Morrighan is about the same shape as California and southern Oregon. Civica is somewhere in Northern California (again, different coastline) making the ruins (as displayed on map) around LA. Terravin is fairly close to the California/Arizona/Nevada border, and with the landscape changing... Dalbreck is around Texas and the southern US, I almost wonder if it's a play on Dallas. Venda is Maine and New England.. I almost wonder if the Great River is the Mississippi. Sanctum, then, is roughly around Pittsburgh or West Virginia. Washington, DC, could be nearby, in a clan territory. The Cam Lanteux is the middle of the country- from Utah to Missouri. Of course, this is all just a guess, and I am by no means a geography expert (I'm just 14). But I think it's highly possible that this is set in the future. In fact, it seems like Mary Pearson was planning this, and it's really kind of clever.