I always appreciate a good omnibus edition, especially when it's free during events like Stuff Your Kindle Day. This Sadie Moss trilogy was a definite improvement over my previous experience with her work (which I DNF'd). Lara Croft Lana Crow was a much more engaging FMC, and the diverse and interesting male characters benefited from the single POV narration from her perspective. The plot was also more my style.

Magic Awakened is an urban fantasy series that blended elements of The Red Queen and Throne of Glass . Picking up eight years after the prequel novella, Kissed by Shadows , we found Lana still in Denver, having switched eye color from green to gray, and somehow being 25 when eight years prior she'd been 18 (18+8=25?).

Strife between social classes is a classic and effective foundation for fantasy narratives and this series featured three distinct social tiers: the Gifted, magic wielders who held positions of power and authority; the Touched, second-class citizens comprised of supernatural beings like shifters, incubi, and pixies; and the Blighted, humans who were considered third-class and faced oppression from many Gifted. Of course, as is often the case in such stories, there must be an orphaned human (a woman in the case) who mysteriously develops magical abilities, and inevitably finds herself drawn into joining the rebellion against the ruling class and fighting for a more equitable society.

The first book of the trilogy, Bound By Magic, was my favorite. It was fast-paced, and even though there wasn't much relationship progress physically or emotionally since the focus was more on the story, I still enjoyed the bits of character development we got. Lana continued to be resourceful and kickass (like in the prequel), and the guys—Gifted Jae, shifter Fenris, incubus Akio, and Blighted Corin—got sufficiently fleshed out so they each felt like different people and not the same character with different accessories.

The second book, Game of Lies, was my second favorite and centered a lot more around political intrigue and undercover missions. It was all about Lana and her guys helping The Resistance gather info on The Representatives (the members of the Gifted governing body) from the inside, so they could bring them down. And was the book where Lana began realizing the world wasn't as black and white as she had once believed. Not all Gifted were evil and not all Blighted were good. This installment explored the moral complexities of the conflict.

The third and last book, Consort of Rebels, was my least favorite of the three. While it wrapped up the overarching plot (culminating in the defeat of the villain) and solidified Lana's relationships, the character development felt formulaic. This was the point where I realized the background exposition for all four of the male characters had been done pretty much the same: a 1-on-1 chat where their past was info-dumped followed by sex. By the time all was said and done, the unique love interests I'd been excited about in book one had turned into flat, same-y characters. They were each given a specific trauma that was brought up a single time for a bonding moment with Lana and then never mentioned again.

Overall, this trilogy was an entertaining, low-angst read with semi-developed characters, flashes of character growth, and a fast-paced narrative. It was a solid, enjoyable read, though not particularly memorable or groundbreaking.