YMMV / The Falling Kingdoms Series

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Nerissa Florens is very popular, despite never having her own POV chapter, for being a skilled spy and a loyal confidante to Cleo. Becoming involved in a relationship with Amara also won her LGBT fans.
• Foe Romance Subtext:
  • Between Jonas and Cleo. He's absolutely obsessed with her out of hate, yet also admires her beauty and spine. He even kisses her in Rebel Spring.
  • Same for Magnus and Cleo, especially after they're forcefully engaged in Rebel Spring. Some of Magnus's dialogue comes off as rather flirty, and they have multiple emotionally intimate and vulnerable moments. It stops being "foe" and becomes canon in the fourth book.
• Jerkass Woobie: Both the Damora siblings fit here.
  • Magnus is distant, callous, mocking, and can even be pettily cruel. He's also suffered a lot of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father, who he both hates and desperately tries to please, has an emotionally distant mother, and is filled with a self-loathing for his feelings for Lucia.
  • Lucia becomes this only later, after slowly being corrupted by her elementia. She can be rather cold-hearted at times, not to mention the whole Roaring Rampage of Revenge on innocent people. Like Magnus, however, she's suffered from emotional abuse, and she has trust issues because she's a Living MacGuffin who seems to be betrayed or used by everyone in her life.
• Moral Event Horizon: Aron's murder of Tomas Agallon, over insults and casks of wine, is revealed to be this when he quite blithely says he actually enjoyed it.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Magnus/Cleo is "Magneo".
  • Jonas/Lysandra is "Josandra".
  • Jonas/Lucia is "Joncia".
• Ship Mates:
  • Magnus/Cleo, Jonas/Lysandra, and Alexius/Lucia fans are often found banding together, as that combination neatly keeps everyone from interfering with a shippers' preferred pairing.
  • After Alexius and Lysandra's deaths and the subsequent rise of Jonas/Lucia, some Magnus/Cleo fans joined forces with fans of the new ship. Meanwhile, Jonas/Lysandra and Alexius/Lucia shippers became even more strongly aligned.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Discussed with Alexius/Lucia. After only four dreams, she's head-over-heels and ready to elope when he suggests it. However, in Crystal Storm she admits that she really didn't know him that long, nor knew that much about him, and even goes so far as to say she only thought herself in love with him. While she thinks on his memory with fondness, its akin to a once-Smitten Teenage Girl recalling her First Love.
  • Ashur and Nic play this more straight, however. Ashur kisses him the first time they meet, declares that Nic's interesting the second time, and that is apparently all it takes for them to them to feel "connected" by the third time.
• The Woobie: Cleo. In the first chapter of the first book, she's traumatized by inadvertently helping murder an innocent man; by the time Falling Kingdoms over, and in under three months, she's also lost her First Love, her sister, her father, and her kingdom. Things don't get quite that bad for her again, but she still faces a lot of loss and pain.