Vanessa Nelson‘s first Fractured Conclave novel mainly suffers from a great deal of contrivance and irrational character behavior; the inciting murder in particular turns out to be a mess of contradictions and nonsense by the end. Which is unfortunate, as it’s got a pretty interesting setting and decent enough protagonist.
While the Heavenly Chaos series shares a couple traits with the author‘s Aether’s Revival series (mainly the heavy food focus and pseudo-cultivation setting), it has a very different tone. The core issue here is that all three central characters have deep and persistent insecurities which end up referenced constantly, and by the third novel the entire production just becomes exhausting. Rather than a fantasy romance, a large chunk of these books reads like a transcription of someone’s real life relationship counseling session.