The War of Lost Hearts

About The War of Lost Hearts

The War of Lost Hearts is Carissa Broadbent's debut trilogy, the self-published series that built her readership years before Crowns of Nyaxia became a phenomenon. It follows Tisaanah, a con artist and refugee with a rare, forbidden kind of magic, who strikes a bargain with Max, a mercenary general bound by a magical geas, to buy her way into the Orders — an elite, brutal magical academy — and save her people. What starts as a transactional arrangement between two guarded, morally compromised leads deepens into an epic-fantasy romance playing out against war, political intrigue, and a magic system built on blood pacts and stolen power.

Published between 2020 and 2022, the trilogy comprises Daughter of No Worlds, Children of Fallen Gods, and Mother of Death and Dawn, with the prequel novella Ashen Son filling in Max's backstory. After Crowns of Nyaxia's breakout success, Broadbent's earlier catalog found a much wider audience, and Tor reissued the trilogy in new editions to meet that demand. It is not set in the same world as Crowns of Nyaxia.

How to read this series

Read the prequel novella Ashen Son first if you want Max's backstory before the trilogy, though it isn't required — then Daughter of No Worlds, Children of Fallen Gods, and Mother of Death and Dawn in that order. The trilogy is complete in three books; it doesn't connect to Crowns of Nyaxia or any other Broadbent series, so there's no crossover reading order to worry about. Two earlier, unrelated series set in this same broader world — The Valtain Preludes and The Valtain Testaments — were unpublished by the author, who has said they were early work that would need a total rewrite before she'd bring them back into print; they are not currently available and are not part of this reading order.