Book Review: Fearless by Lauren Roberts

‘Fearless’ by Lauren Roberts is the final book in her ‘Powerless’ trilogy. It was released in 2025, and follows on in the immediate fallout of the cliffhanger in ‘Reckless’, that despite murdering the late king, Paedyn Grey was going to marry Kit, and become the queen of Ilya.

And, since the kingdom distrusts her so much, she must endure what is essentially another series of Purging Trials, where in which she must demonstrate the ‘Three B’s’ that Kind Aldric instilled onto Kit as the best means to rule a kingdom: Bravery, Benevolence, and Brutality.

This book has a lot of secret moments and trysts between Paedyn and Kai throughout the various events in this book. Like the first book in the trilogy, this book is written with the guise that events have spanned over a number of months, simply due to the duration of the trials Paedyn endures.

With that in mind, I would argue that the pacing was better in this book than the last, as the almost episodic experiences that take place in ‘Fearless’ are consistent and punchy. However, I had a lot of gripes with this final book, and while those who knew before reading this review, that I didn’t go into ‘Fearless’ with high hopes after not being invested in the story across the first two books, I still have some criticisms.

The plot twist about Kit and his motivations effectively came out of nowhere. It felt, like the original plan for this book had to be changed after the publication of ‘Powerless’, but likely while ‘Reckless’ was still in the pre-publication stages, because there was a rather significnat lack of foreshadowing for this twist in this first book, and while the narration Kit provided in ‘Reckless’ was arguably jumbled, frantic, and disorganised, I would argue that that wasn’t necessarily enough to justify the means to which he went to in the name of his goal.

With this in mind, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me, but not in the good way. I felt that the twist lacked in breadcrumbs and foreshadowing. There wasn’t enough of Kit pining for his brother’s company like a child would in the first book to justify some of his choices later.

Similarly, I felt that his ambition was another confusing reveal, since there was little foreshadowing in the previous books about Kit wanting to be better than Aldric as a ruler until the third book. From where I was sitting, I felt that it was understandable to want to clean up the mess his father had made with isolating Ilya from other nations, but I think a lot of Kit’s arc could have been further justified by a few sleepless nights in his study reading specific documents about powers, the plague, and maybe even Ava’s medical records, something concrete early that would have seemed amiss for a new ruler to be reading during this jerky transition to power.

Similarly, the addition of a post-humous interlude of King Aldric’s narration to establish the way the early life of Kit and Kai came to be, almost felt, at times, to be a bit spoon-feed-y, with readers unable to draw their own conclusions through inference about how the king’s powerless newborn vanished and was replaced by an older boy with a vast pool of power, and how that reflected upon Aldric when his youngest daughter, Ava, was born sickly and lacking in power.

I also felt like the fallout was all a bit inevitable. In fiction, when queens fall in love with second sons, something often happens to remove her husband from the picture, whether that be death, or divorce, or other plot-oriented circumstances.

This series was not for me, unfortunately, and while the story was tied up in a bow nicely, I don’t think the events of the series particularly stuck with me, which disappointed me, because I really wanted to be blown out of the water and rescind all my previous apprehension about the series, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

As I said while reviewing ‘Reckless’, while this series wasn’t my favourite, that doesn’t mean it won’t be yours, I certainly wouldn’t discourage you from giving this series a go!