Kiss the Fallen

Fate pulls characters toward their destiny in a world of myth, magic, light and darkness in Thompson’s debut fantasy romance.

Centuries after a catastrophic global conflict, Earth’s tiny population of 25,000 suffers a powerful curse. Young men and women have until their 21st birthdays to find and bond with their true soul mates through a Blood Kiss, a swapping of blood that kills the hopeful couple if they aren’t meant for each other. If a mate isn’t found, he or she becomes one of the Fallen, locked in an unbreakable slumber. Tyler, the last of the Chosen, magical beings who guard the Fallen and are prophesized to break the curse, escaped the treachery of the evil army, the Legion of the Unknown, and its leader, Jake Stanton. He bonds with his mate, Anna, and helps his daughter, Amara, and adopted son, Dorian, a boy with surprisingly powerful magic, control their gifts and hide from the Legion. Dorian and Amara are inseparable as children and seemingly fated to be together, but tragedy separates them. Amara grows up with her mother secretly using her powers to heal and help others, while the Legion captures and raises Dorian as “Jay” and trains him to hunt and eliminate or assimilate members of the magical clans familiar to the genre: Gypsies, elves, sprites, time-shifters and pyrokinetics. Amara, Dorian and his partner, Case, propelled by Amara’s prophetic dreams, must untangle legend and uncover the lost secrets of their world to heal the Fallen and re-establish the royal bloodline. If Stanton isn’t directly, cruelly interfering, his sinister shadow smolders in the background. Stanton’s villainy is the book’s unifying thread. Although divided into three parts, the novel comprises a pair of fantasy/adventure love stories; the switch from one to the other is a  abrupt, but the second story is less predictable. In both, destiny, revelation and romance are pleasantly complicated, if at times syrupy.

A well-developed world, tinged with romantic principles and fatalism; ideal for YA readers mature enough for somewhat racy love scenes.