The Empire Wars

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Empire Wars by Akana Phenix is a first person dual-POV YA fantasy dystopia that takes place in an alternative future of Earth. Coa is a former feral child who agrees to take part in the Great Hunt in order to guarantee her family's safety for a year. Ife is the teenage bride of the Great Sniper General of the Allied Forces and has been secretly working against him for years.

Hunger Games and Battle Royale serve as strong inspiration here as Akana Phenix melds the idea of teens forced into a deadly competition and willing witnesses with the reality of child soldiers and genocide. The Allied Forces take their sons at the age of six and meld them into machines that can't even cry and buy into more extreme versions of current ideas of toxic masculinity, such as ice cream being for children. Genocide comes up often, particularly in Ife’s chapters as her people have been slaughtered by the Forces and she witnessed the assassination of her own grandfather, the former king of the Makari-African people. The Allied Forces subscribe to ideas of blood purity and empires and subjugate those they conquer to forced labor or experimentation. Real world genocides are occasionally brought up and Phenix is unafraid of drawing direct parallels where applicable.

The fantasy elements come in more with orun, magical abilities that were only known to the Makari-African people for centuries. Ife, the granddaughter of a Makari-African king, doesn't have magic but Coa does. While it's not explained yet why Coa has fire abilities, given her description and that she was abandoned as a child, it seems likely that she is of Makari ancestry. Orun abilities are elemental with fire and water-types, but also include sun-based magic that can be turned dark is a user is born during an eclipse.

The relationship between Ife and Maximus is one of the most interesting parts. Ife is playing him, making him believe she loves him and is too innocent to truly understand the weight of marrying her grandfather's murderer. She's very good at playing up the idea of a silly teenage girl who only cares about clothes, make-up and having a good time to the point that everyone seems to believe that's exactly who she is all while she's doing what she can to set-up chess pieces to help her bring the Allied Forces down. Maximus, however, seems to genuinely care about Ife and would do anything for her. Given that the Allied Forces’ main goal is stamp out foreigners and to achieve blood purity and Maximus is extremely high-ranked, it's a subverted set-up of the enemies-to-lovers trope that seems to be played straight on Maximus’ part.

Content warning for strong themes of genocide, colonization, racism, and xenophobia

I would recommend this to fans of Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, readers of YA dystopia that want a bit more fantasy mixed in, and those looking for a book that discusses genocide from a dystopian angle.

Original and compelling!! Completely addictive. Highly recommend and will be purchasing for my libraries. Can't wait to read what comes next!