Daughter of No Worlds — The War of Lost Hearts, Book One

Broadbent Before Nyaxia

Before The Serpent and the Wings of Night made Carissa Broadbent a phenomenon, she wrote the War of Lost Hearts, and Daughter of No Worlds is its powerful opening. For readers who discovered Broadbent through Crowns of Nyaxia and want more of her atmospheric, emotionally serious fantasy romance, this earlier trilogy is the obvious next stop, and it showcases the gifts — a fierce, wounded heroine, a disciplined slow burn, and a willingness to grapple with weighty themes — that would later make her a star.

The novel follows Tisaanah, a young magic wielder who escaped a life of slavery and travels to the distant kingdom of Ara, determined to join its powerful Orders of magic users and gain the strength to free those she was forced to leave behind. To do so, she must undergo an apprenticeship with Maxantarius Farlione, a disgraced, ill-tempered former soldier with a dark past and no desire to teach.

A Heroine Forged by Trauma

Tisaanah is a quintessential Broadbent heroine: shaped by trauma, fierce in her determination, and driven by a purpose larger than herself. Her experience of slavery gives the book its moral weight and its emotional engine — she is not fighting for personal glory but for the freedom of others still in chains, and that selflessness makes her a compelling figure to follow. Broadbent writes her wounds and her strength with equal care, and Tisaanah’s refusal to be broken by her past, while never pretending the past did not happen, is the heart of the novel.

The Slow Burn With Max

The romance pairs Tisaanah with Maxantarius, the brooding, damaged soldier forced to train her, and it unfolds with the patient slow burn that is Broadbent’s signature. Their relationship is built on wary respect, shared trauma, and the gradual erosion of Max’s defences, and it develops over the course of the book rather than igniting instantly. Readers who want immediate heat should recalibrate; those who value an earned, emotionally grounded romance will find the wait worthwhile. The dynamic between the determined former slave and the disgraced soldier carries real tension and tenderness.

Weighty Themes

What distinguishes the War of Lost Hearts from lighter romantasy is its willingness to sit with serious material. Slavery, exploitation, the corruption of power, and the cost of sacrifice are central concerns, and Broadbent treats them as subject rather than backdrop. The book does not shy away from the darkness of Tisaanah’s world or the moral complexity of the choices she and Max face, and that seriousness gives the story an emotional depth that elevates it above the genre’s commercial baseline. It is not a light read, but it is a resonant one.

Worldbuilding and Magic

Broadbent builds a rich world here, with a developed magic system, competing political powers, and the looming threat of war. The Orders of magic wielders, the politics of Ara, and the larger conflicts that the trilogy will explore are established with the confidence that marks her later work, giving the romance a substantial fantasy spine. For readers who want their romantasy grounded in genuine worldbuilding rather than a thin backdrop, the War of Lost Hearts delivers.

A Deliberate Build

Daughter of No Worlds is a deliberately paced book, building its world, its heroine, and its central relationship with care rather than rushing to spectacle. This patience is characteristic of Broadbent and rewards readers who enjoy a slow, immersive build, though those wanting fast-paced action throughout may find the early stretches measured. As the first book of a trilogy, it also establishes more than it resolves, setting up the larger conflicts that Children of Fallen Gods and Mother of Death and Dawn will develop and conclude.

The Verdict

Daughter of No Worlds is a strong opening to Carissa Broadbent’s earlier trilogy and an essential read for fans wanting more of her work beyond Crowns of Nyaxia. It pairs a fierce, traumatised heroine with a patient slow-burn romance and weighty themes of slavery and sacrifice, all rendered in the atmospheric, emotionally serious style that defines her. Deliberate, dark, and resonant, it shows the gifts that would later make Broadbent a phenomenon, and it launches a trilogy worth following to its end.

A Different Flavour of Broadbent

Readers who come to Daughter of No Worlds from Crowns of Nyaxia will notice both the continuities and the differences in Broadbent’s work. The atmospheric prose, the traumatised-but-fierce heroine, and the disciplined slow burn are all here, but the War of Lost Hearts has a different texture — more grounded in the politics of empire and slavery, less steeped in the gothic, vampiric mythology of her later series. This makes the trilogy a rewarding expansion of her range for established fans, and a reminder that her core preoccupations — freedom, power, identity, and the cost of love in a hostile world — were present from the start. It also stands as a record of her growth as a writer: the gifts that would later be honed to a fine point in Crowns of Nyaxia are already evident here, in rougher and in some ways rawer form. For anyone who wants to understand how Broadbent became one of the defining voices of the romantasy boom, the War of Lost Hearts is essential reading, and Daughter of No Worlds is where that earlier, equally ambitious story begins.

Our rating: 4.3/5 — A fierce, atmospheric romantasy of freedom and sacrifice that showcases Broadbent’s gifts, pairing a traumatised heroine with a disciplined slow burn.

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