This book was enjoyable. But it presumes that readers are coming to it as die hard fans of RWBY (granted a lot are), but if you know nothing about the world very little is provided.

I enjoyed this book (obviously, it's RWBY), but I feel like it didn't really match the synopsis, so I went in kind of blind. Also, sometimes the writing style was a little lacking, and it could get confusing to go from the viewpoint of one character to an omniscient viewpoint in between chapters. However, I LOVED getting to learn more about team CFVY, since we didn't know much about them before reading. I like each character individually and as a team, and I'm excited for more character development in the next book.

This is my first time reading a book based on some other form of media (that I can remember), in this case an animated web series. If you’ve never seen RWBY before I feel like the book does try to take into account new fans and doesn’t shy away from explaining concepts people who have watched the show already understand, but since I’m not going into this with no knowledge I’m not sure how successful the attempt was. If you do want to watch the show before reading the book you only need to watch through volume three.

That being said, I’m going to be writing this review with the assumption that you’ve already watched the show since this would be extremely long if I try to explain everything about the show. Mild spoilers ahead for RWBY up to volume four.

After the Fall takes place over a year after the fall of Beacon Academy and, like the cover implies, follows Team CFVY. I was super hyped when I saw this because I’ve always been curious about Team CFVY. In the show you see them fight multiple times, but you don’t get to know them as well as Team RWBY or Team JNPR. This book finally aims to fix that though.

In After the Fall you discover that Team CFVY has decided to continue their studies at Shade Academy, located in the desert kingdom of Vacuo. They take on a mission that leads them to encounter a woman named Slate and her fellow desert nomads. Tagging along with the nomads are a Huntsman and Huntress who are protecting an older Huntsman and his grandchild as they make their way through Vacuo.

Slate informs the team that they’ve been traveling together for the past month as they’ve escaped three Grimm attacks in three different settlements. No one knows what is causing the increase in Grimm attacks other than the fact that everyone in the settlement feels an unnatural increase in their emotions before an attack. The strong negative emotions caused by these “mood bombs” draw the Grimm to the settlements, but no one knows what is causing the sudden change in their emotions. Team CFVY agrees to help discover the cause of the mood bombs and protect the nomads from any more Grimm attacks.

The plot was mostly entertaining, but I did find myself getting bored at times. I was interested in finding out what was creating the mood bombs, but it’s not that hard of a mystery to solve. I feel like the best part of the book was exploring a new area of Remnant that hasn’t been in the show yet. If RWBY does one thing well it’s creating a diverse world with realistic groups of people, and Vacuo felt unique compared to the other settings in the RWBY universe.

Other than exploring a new part of Remnant, I also enjoyed finally getting to know about Team CFVY. Along with getting to know their personalities, you learn about their semblances and their past. Through them you also learn about what became of Vale after the attack. This information has been sorely missing from the show and I’m glad that I’ve finally learned more about it.

I started this story being only interested in Coco and Velvet: Coco because I love her style and Velvet because I love her powers. I ended up loving every member of Team CFVY though.

Coco is the leader of the team. Even though she gives off a cocky appearance she has her doubts and worries. She feels the need to be the perfect leader and take responsibility for everything, but she starts to question her ideas about leadership when her teammates voice their frustrations about how she acts. I enjoyed this extra layer to Coco as it made her more relatable.

Velvet’s personality was the biggest surprise of all. The show gave me the impression that she was quiet and shy, and while she is around people she isn’t close with she’s pretty outspoken around her friends. I loved this play on expectations. She’s also the type of character who hates it when people look down on her, and feels the need to prove herself to her teammates.

Yatsuhashi is the definition of “looks like they could kill you, but is actually a cinnamon roll.” He’s big and strong but was also the most mellow out of the entire group. His caring demeanor made me look forward to his chapters the most. I found his ability to erase people’s memories intriguing along with his aversion to use it.

For whatever reason I never noticed in the show that Fox was blind, so it was interesting getting to learn that about him. I love how RWBY portrays their disabled characters because they’re always as competent as any other character would be. Fox was the funny guy of the group and he’s also the only one that’s actually from Vacuo. I wish we got more chapters from his perspective because I enjoyed both his jokes and his commentary about Vacuo.

I have to say that this is the most diverse team I’ve seen from RWBY. You have two males and two females. Fox has dark brown skin and is blind while Yatsuhashi has a tanned, Asian appearance. Coco is a lesbian and Velvet is a Faunus (a race that is discriminated against by certain people in the RWBY universe). This is definitely the most diverse RWBY team so far and I love it.

There were a host of enjoyable side characters. Slate was an awesome leader of the nomads. Edward, the old Huntsman, and Gus, his grandchild, were amazing and I adored their relationship. I liked Carmine and Bertilak, the Huntress and Huntsman protecting Edward and Gus, because they added a layer to the story that was necessary. I wish we would’ve learned more about their history though to flesh them out more.

There is no romance in this story for anyone hoping for some, but I personally was getting major Yatsuhashi and Velvet vibes.

The writing for the story was good. They nailed the feel of the RWBY characters, but the writing stumbled during fight scenes. After watching amazing animated RWBY fights for years I should’ve guessed that anything otherwise would always be subpar. Each chapter was told from a different team member, except for every third chapter which took place in the past and was more omniscient. The chapters could get long in the beginning, but they got shorter by the end of the book. Having the book start with long chapters and end with shorter chapters made the ending feel rushed compared to the beginning.

After the Fall was a great RWBY book. I was expecting it to be terrible because I wasn’t sure how an animated web series would transfer to book format, but it works. It probably helped that the story is completely new and not just a rehash of what has already been shown in the web series. I enjoyed learning about Team CFVY, and even though I only started reading this book for Coco and Velvet I ended up caring about each member. The plot was fairly basic, but it made up for it by delivering information I’ve been curious about for a while. I think any fan of RWBY would enjoy this book, especially if you’ve always wanted to learn more about Team CFVY like me. And yes, they’re as awesome as the show has led us to believe.

Almost the moment that this novel was announced, my husband and I had to pre-order it. He's a huge RWBY fan and got me into the series, and getting an entire novel based around Team CFVY was such an exciting prospect! He hasn't read this yet, but I'm glad I finally managed to finish it.

I should start by saying that before I read After the Fall, I did come across a video on YouTube that discussed how the book fits into the RWBY canon timeline of events, so I was obviously spoiled for almost the entire plot of the book prior to ever reading it. I tried to make sure there was some time between when I watched that video and when I read this in order for the information to not be fresh in my mind, and I partially succeeded. The story that occurs in the book's present time was still mostly new to me, but a lot of the background information given in flashback chapters had stuck with me longer, and I got through those chapters much faster because I essentially skim-read them.

You follow Team CFVY where they presently are, and for a point of reference, the story in "current-day" is occurring around the same time or shortly after the ending of volume 5 of the animated show. The team has been in the country of Vacuo, making their way to Shade Academy, since shortly after the ending of volume 3, and they've been having a time of it. We follow one major mission they're on at this point in time, but we get frequent flashbacks to the childhoods of Coco, Fox and Yatsuhashi throughout the book, and a lot of flashbacks to some of the team's time spent at Beacon.

There are a fair few chapters just dedicated to Beacon flashbacks, and in these (and towards the end of the book overall,) the narrative shifts into a third-person omniscient narration that is a little haphazard. The entire book is meant to have a third-person omniscient narrative overall, but generally Myers wrote clear breaks into the book when it was time to shift from following the thoughts and perspective of one character to the next. But after a while, we go from focusing on one character in a single paragraph to suddenly being in the headspace of a different one in the next, and I'm afraid that bothered me quite a bit.

Overall, I enjoyed this though! I think it's not entirely necessary to read for those who keep up with the show, but I enjoyed getting to know more about Team CFVY, and I think the fight scenes and world-building were spectacular. This has, if anything, whet my appetite and made me eager to see how the animators are going to handle the setting of Vacuo and Shade Academy when they get to it in the show.

5/5 stars.

An awesome look into the world of RWBY and the parts we never got to see before. Vacuo is terrifying and I adore it and Team CFVY is different from what I expected, but I loved them as well. A great story that explains anything you might have forgotten but doesn't hold your hand too much.

Love the casual queerness of Coco, the way disability was handled, and the way mental health and communication was handled.

So looking forward to the next one.

3.5 stars
In all honestly, this book wasn't amazing. The writing was often dry and repeated the same words quite often on a page, it felt hard to read even during the faster scenes. The plot wasn't incredible either, predictable. The area where this book shines is in the characters. There was no way Team CFVY couldn't have caught your attention in the early volumes of RWBY. And unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of them at all. This book was definitely what I was waiting for in terms of character exploration and development. I loved seeing what everyone has been up to and I am 100% on board for the next book, can't wait to see and meet Team SSSN for real this time!!!