Verdict: A genuinely accomplished dark fantasy with a romance two-thirds of its readers describe as abusive — and the real question is not whether that is true but whether the book knows it.
Best for: Readers who want dark fantasy first and romance second, who read toxic dynamics deliberately rather than by accident, and who can start a six-book series at its weakest volume.
Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — explicit and plentiful, though on a base of only 10 romance.io ratings)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5 — a 4.10 Goodreads average against 3.8 on StoryGraph, where readers who track content warnings rate it materially lower)
Tropes: Morally grey love interest, immortal age gap, dark high fantasy, necromancy, predator and prey, corruption arc, toxic relationship, cliffhanger, non-HEA.
The Sting of Victory is S.D. Simper’s 2018 opener to Fallen Gods, a completed six-book dark sapphic fantasy series published through her own Endless Night Publications, in which a gentle young witch called Flowridia falls into the orbit of Ayla Darkleaf — an undead woman 1,736 years old with a vicious temper and a great deal of blood behind her.
It holds a 4.10 average across 1,494 Goodreads ratings, with 47% at five stars. StoryGraph, whose users self-select for content-warning literacy, puts it at 3.8. That 0.3 gap is the whole story of this book in one number, and both halves of it are worth understanding before you start.
What Is The Sting of Victory About?
This is dark high fantasy in the fullest sense — gods who intervene, necromancy with consequences, court politics with a body count, and horror imagery that several readers compare to Stephen King rather than to romance. StoryGraph’s community rates the mood 93% dark against 6% hopeful, which is the most diagnostic pair of numbers in the entire dataset. It is not a romance with dark elements. It is a dark fantasy that contains a relationship.
Flowridia arrives with almost nothing: no status, no power she understands, and a habit of trusting people who have not earned it. Ayla assumes, correctly, that she can have whatever she wants. What the book does with that imbalance is the thing readers have been arguing about for eight years, and 72% of StoryGraph readers say character flaws are a main focus — which suggests the book is at least pointing at the problem.
What Makes This Dark Sapphic Fantasy Work
- The worldbuilding: The most-cited strength by a distance — eleven reviewers name it. Gods, necromancy and a political map that feels lived in rather than sketched.
- The horror: Graphic and committed. One reviewer reaches for Joe Hill and Stephen King’s In the Tall Grass as a calibration for how far it goes.
- The ending: Unusually, the most positively received element in the book. Eight reviewers remark on it and the great majority are enthusiastic rather than annoyed.
- Ayla as a character: Even readers who reject the romance concede she is compelling. Defenders describe her as twisted but unmistakably in love.
- The series actually lands: Six books, complete as of October 2024, and every volume rates higher than the last — 4.10 up to 4.76.
Book Synopsis
Flowridia is a witch with a talent she does not fully control and a gentleness the world around her has no use for. She is not a warrior, she is not political, and she has spent her life being underestimated by people who then get what they want from her.
Ayla Darkleaf is undead, ancient and extremely dangerous, and she notices Flowridia in the way a predator notices something small. What forms between them is immediate, intense and entirely uneven — Ayla has seventeen centuries of practice at getting her way, and Flowridia has none at refusing.
Around them, a war is assembling. Gods are taking sides, a demon from the prologue is circling, and the political manoeuvring that Flowridia does not understand is going to demand something from her regardless. The question the book runs on is not whether Ayla will hurt her. It is what Flowridia will decide that means, and whether the story agrees with her.
My Review
The fantasy here is the real thing. Simper builds a world with gods who have agendas, magic with costs, and horror sequences that commit fully — eleven reviewers name the worldbuilding as the strength and the praise is specific rather than polite. If you want dark sapphic fantasy where the darkness is structural rather than aesthetic, this delivers at a level very few indie titles reach.
The ending deserves its own mention because it inverts the usual pattern. Cliffhangers normally generate complaints; this one generates converts. Of the eight reviewers who remark on it, most are enthusiastic — one describes being truly hooked by the close, another calls it insane and immediately continued. It circles back to the prologue’s red-eyed demon, closing a structural loop while leaving the relationship in pieces.
Now the thing you actually came here to find out. Two-thirds of reviewers who write about this book describe the central relationship as abusive — 24 of 36 in our sample, spanning every star band from one to five. StoryGraph’s community content warnings put emotional abuse and toxic relationship in the top graphic tier. What splits readers is not whether the abuse is there. Nobody argues the relationship is healthy. The split is over whether the book knows what it is doing. Fifteen reviewers say it romanticises the abuse, and the specific objection is almost always the same: Ayla breaks Flowridia’s arm in a rage, apologises, and the narrative treats the apology as resolution. One three-star reader puts it exactly — it is not romantic, it is romanticised. Nine reviewers argue the opposite, that the discomfort is deliberate and the power imbalance shifts across the series, and several five-star readers post their own content warnings unprompted.
The evidence genuinely cuts both ways, and one detail decides it more than any review does: the publisher’s own copy sells “a toxic love affair surely doomed for heartbreak,” and the cover carries an author blurb saying the love story left the blurber uneasy and unsure how to feel. This book is marketing its discomfort. That undercuts any reading where the author has not noticed. What remains contested is book one’s resolution beat — the apology lands for one camp as a beginning and for the other as an endorsement, and readers who continued report the ambiguity gets addressed later.
There is one thing the marketing does not do, and it matters. Ayla’s age is stated precisely: 1,736. Flowridia’s age is never given at all. Three independent reviewers flag what reads as deliberate evasion — she is joked about as looking twelve, then fifteen; asked her age directly more than once she answers only that she is older than she looks; Ayla says twice that age is just a number. At least one reader resolves that ambiguity as underage and rates accordingly, while another reads her as an adult being infantilised by everyone around her. The text does not close it. We are not going to invent a number the book withholds, but you should know the question exists before you start.
My honest note: A four-star fantasy carrying a romance that a lot of readers cannot forgive, and both of those things are true at once. If you read dark romance deliberately and want the discourse, this is a rich book; if “toxic” is a warning rather than a genre, believe it.
| Element | In The Sting of Victory |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Flowridia & Ayla Darkleaf — a young witch and an undead woman of 1,736, predator and prey |
| Core tropes | Morally grey love interest, immortal age gap, corruption arc, toxic relationship, necromancy |
| Setting | A secondary-world continent of warring kingdoms, intervening gods and open necromancy |
| Heat level | 5/5 — explicit and plentiful, on a thin base of 10 romance.io ratings |
| Series | Fallen Gods #1 of 6 — series complete October 2024; book one is non-HEA and ends on a cliffhanger |
| Content notes | Emotional abuse and domestic violence between the leads, gore, child death, alcoholism, unstated protagonist age, genocide and body horror at lower intensity |
How Dark and Spicy Is The Sting of Victory?
romance.io rates it 5/5, “explicit and plentiful” — but that band rests on only ten ratings, which is thin enough that we are flagging it rather than presenting it as settled. Reader testimony on the sex is genuinely split: four reviewers praise it, two found it perfunctory, and one felt the scenes read as though written by someone without much interest in what two women actually do. Treat 5/5 as the best available figure, not a certainty.
The darkness is not in question at all. StoryGraph’s community rates the mood 93% dark against 6% hopeful, and its top-tier content warnings are emotional abuse, gore and toxic relationship. One label worth correcting: I Heart SapphFic tags this BDSM, and no reviewer reports on-page negotiation, safewords or aftercare. The dynamic is predator and prey with D/s aesthetics, which is a different thing, and the sharpest review in the corpus makes exactly that distinction. For comparable heat with a very different consent frame, see Captive in the Underworld.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want dark fantasy with real worldbuilding underneath it, you read toxic dynamics as a genre rather than a failure, you enjoy horror imagery in your fantasy, and a six-book completed series is a draw rather than a deterrent.
You may want to skip it if: you need the narrative to explicitly condemn what it depicts, an unstated protagonist age is a dealbreaker, you want a romance that resolves inside one book, or 322 pages of escalating cruelty is not what you came to fantasy for.
In short: excellent dark fantasy wrapped around a relationship that two-thirds of readers name as abusive — deliberate, contested, and not for everyone.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
There is no discovery engine here, and that is the finding. No Lesbrary review, no Jude in the Stars, no LezReviewBooks, no Bookish Sapphic; I Heart SapphFic has a database entry with no review attached. No trade coverage of any kind — no Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal or Booklist. The Lesbian Review did cover it, though only a marketing pull quote survives where we could reach it. BookTok amounts to a single video from 2021. What is actually driving readers in 2026 is Kindle Unlimited, an eight-year backlist tail, a finished six-book series, and the author’s own newsletter funnel, which gives away two prequel novellas. Worth knowing: searching “Fallen Gods” now surfaces Hannah Kaner’s traditionally published trilogy of the same name, which has effectively buried Simper’s series in search.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Worldbuilding first, named by eleven reviewers. The ending second, and enthusiastically — this is the rare cliffhanger readers thank the author for. Ayla third, conceded as compelling even by readers who reject the relationship. Fourth, and this is a real structural fact: the series improves monotonically. Every volume rates higher than the last, from 4.10 to 4.76 for the finale, and it is genuinely complete.
What readers argue about and complain about: The relationship, above everything and by an enormous margin — 24 of 36 reviewers with written reviews name it as abusive, across every star band. Second: the plot, with twelve reviewers calling it incoherent, aimless or hard to follow. Third: Flowridia herself, described by ten reviewers as too naive, too passive or actively infantilised by the narrative. Fourth: pacing, with six readers reporting they pushed through a slow first quarter. The genuine split is on authorial intent, and it does not resolve — the darkness is unambiguously deliberate, but whether book one’s forgiveness beat reads as a beginning or an endorsement depends entirely on the reader, and two reviewers say plainly they could not tell which the book meant.
The series question everyone should ask first: Book one does not resolve. There is no HEA and no happy-for-now — romance.io’s non-HEA tag is accurate. The lovers are separated, a well-liked secondary character dies, and the story stops mid-crisis. The good news is that the destination exists: six books, finished in October 2024, each rated higher than the one before. The caveat is scale in both directions. Book one is 322 pages; book six is 1,065. And 1,494 readers rated book one against 171 for book six — an 88.6% drop. Some of that rising average is genuine improvement and some of it is survivorship, because the readers who could not forgive the romance left. If you need a resolved romance inside one volume, this is not that, and no amount of series quality changes it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does The Sting of Victory have a happy ending?
No. Book one ends on a cliffhanger with the couple separated and a major secondary character dead. romance.io tags it non-HEA and that is accurate. The six-book series does complete, as of October 2024.
Is the relationship abusive?
Twenty-four of thirty-six reviewers who wrote about it say yes, and StoryGraph’s community lists emotional abuse and toxic relationship as top-tier content warnings. Readers disagree about whether the book endorses it — the publisher’s own copy sells a “toxic love affair,” which suggests the discomfort is intentional.
How old is Flowridia?
The book never says. Ayla’s age is given precisely as 1,736; Flowridia’s is withheld, and three reviewers flag what reads as deliberate evasion. At least one resolves it as underage. We are not going to supply a number the text refuses to.
Is there an audiobook?
No, and the absence is pointed. S.D. Simper produced six audiobooks with narrator Lois Ridge across 2021 for her Sea and Stars series and Carmilla and Laura, and gave Fallen Gods none of them. Nothing on Audible, Chirp or Libro.fm.
Do I need to read the prequels first?
No. How to Found Your Kingdom and Shadows and Sunlight are free newsletter novellas rated 4.62 and 4.47, but on only 60 and 53 ratings. Start with book one.
If You Loved The Sting of Victory, Read These Next
The strongest comparable is Simper’s own Sea and Stars series, set in the same world — two reviewers came to Fallen Gods directly from it, and it is the only part of her catalogue with audiobooks. Her most-rated book, Carmilla and Laura, sits at 4.20 across 3,810 ratings and does Victorian vampires with far less cruelty. If the toxic dynamic and the mythic scale are what worked, Captive in the Underworld goes further still. More context in our spicy sapphic romantasy guide, across dark romance, and in our book reviews.
The Bottom Line
The Sting of Victory is ambitious dark sapphic fantasy that mostly succeeds at being dark fantasy. The worldbuilding is genuinely good, the horror commits, and the ending converts people. What it also is: a book whose central relationship two-thirds of reviewers describe as abusive, whose protagonist’s age is withheld in a way several readers find evasive, and whose plot twelve reviewers found hard to follow. Worth it if you want the dark and the discourse and can commit to a long series that improves at every step; skip it if “toxic” is a warning rather than an invitation. Check The Sting of Victory on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, The Sting of Victory ranks as accomplished dark sapphic fantasy with a contested romance — strong on world and horror, compromised by an abuse dynamic the book markets but does not resolve, and best approached as fantasy first rather than as a love story.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ 4.10 average across 1,494 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 3.8 on StoryGraph, 0.3 lower
- ✓ 47% of Goodreads ratings at five stars
- ✓ 24 of 36 reviewers name the abuse
Romance ★★★☆☆ 2.9/5
- ✓ Chemistry acknowledged even by detractors
- ✓ Power imbalance shifts across the series
- ✓ Marketed openly as a toxic love affair
- ✓ Fifteen reviewers say it romanticises abuse
Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Ayla compelling by near-unanimous agreement
- ✓ 72% say character flaws are a main focus
- ✓ 78% of StoryGraph readers found the cast diverse
- ✓ Ten reviewers call Flowridia passive or infantilised
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Worldbuilding named by eleven reviewers
- ✓ Horror imagery compared to Stephen King
- ✓ Only one reviewer flags editing problems
- ✓ Twelve found the plot incoherent or aimless
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 93% of StoryGraph readers rate the mood dark
- ✓ 51% found it emotional, 37% tense
- ✓ Eight reviewers moved by the ending
- ✓ Only 6% found anything hopeful in it
Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5
- ✓ romance.io top band, explicit and plentiful
- ✓ Domination dynamics throughout
- ✓ Band rests on only 10 romance.io ratings
- ✓ Reader testimony splits four praise, two pan
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Most positively received element in the book
- ✓ Circles back to the prologue’s demon
- ✓ Series complete in six books, October 2024
- ✓ No HEA, cliffhanger, and a major death
Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Dense worldbuilding rewards a second pass
- ✓ Series improves 4.10 to 4.76 across six books
- ✓ Free prequel novellas extend the world
- ✓ 88.6% of book-one readers never reach book six
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