u/TheaterBowlingNerd13

I'm looking for a book series (I think it's either three or four books) about aliens coming to Earth. The alien race is human-like and human-presenting, but they're abnormally tall and have supernatural strength and intelligence. The female main character is in her upper teens (like 17-19 or something) and has a younger teen brother. She lives with her parents and her dad takes care of the family. Her mom is sick and dying and she used to be a famous opera singer, or a famous singer of some sort. Earth is dying and the aliens come to save the top athletic and smartest teenager humans to come back to their planet. The female lead is not the most athletic, but then she sings and it turns out that she is a rare human that posesses the ability to create the alien frequencies for their technology, which is rare in the alien race and only royalty possess the ability. She uses this to make one of their ships fly, which catches the aliens' attention. Her brother passes the athletic test, and the aliens decide to let her join as well because of her voice. From what I remember, humans aren't supposed to be able to make the frequencies. On the journey to the alien planet, the female lead falls in love with the alien prince. I believe there are some slightly spicy scenes between them, but I'm not 100% sure. When the ships arrive back on the alien planet, the female lead meets the alien king and he is not impressed with her and won't let the prince marry her unless she becomes a full citizen of their planet. The only way for her to do that is to compete in another competition against other non-citizens. It's high stakes, because many people train for years for it and still end up dying from it. She enters the competition and wins, which grants her full citizen status. She then requests that her parents also be brought back to the planet. However, she finds out that her mom died and is mad that she didn't get to say goodbye. The aliens still bring her father back, and she ends up getting married to the alien prince. At the wedding, per the alien customs, she isn't supposed to dance with or touch any other man for the first year of marriage, but her new husband knows how much it means to her to have a last dance with her father and grants her permission to do so.

As far as I can remember, the first book covers the competition on Earth, the second covers the journey back to the alien planet, and the third covers the other competition and wedding. And before you suggest it's The Chronicles of the Invaders series (Conquest, Empire, Dominium) by Jennifer Ridyard and John Connolly, I'm 90% sure it isn't. None of the cover variations match what I remember, and the plot is similar, but there are key differences from the plot I remember (namely that the female is alien and the male is human and not a prince).

Also, google keeps pulling up this series called The Resonance Trilogy (consisting of Resonance, Dissonance, and Harmonic) by A.J. Rosen (originally a massive hit on Wattpad before being officially published). But I literally can't find it anywhere. I remember reading it on my Amazon Fire tablet during Covid, and I remember it was at least a couple years old at that point, too. Published sometime in the 2000's or 2010's. I don't remember if I downloaded a free PDF of it at the time, or if it was free on the Amazon Kindle app that I had. Either way, that is the platform I read it on.

Any help or ideas would be much appreciated. I have thought about this series many times over the years, and it bugs me that I can't remember the title. Part of me is starting to think it was a fever dream or the Mandela effect or something. I also can't look at it on my tablet. I don't know where it is right now, and haven't had any luck looking for it either (it's also really old and slow, and I have no idea if it would even turn on at this point).

Ok, so I have a theory about the first Battle Brief class that Violet has in Fourth Wing (Chapter 5). I haven't seen anything else on this, and I don't know how accurate it might be, but just hear me out.

In the briefing, the attack mentions several things that upon a re-read made me pause. I think >!it might have actually been venin that attacked, and that the whole drift of gryphons and flyers story wasa cover up!<.

First, >!the wards were down, and we know flyers can't channel through their gryphons within the wards. However, we also know from Iron Flame and Onyx Storm that venin can't survive/channel very well within the wards either.!<

Second, >!we learned that the attack burned many of the buildings to the ground before the riot of dragons even got there. While I know flyers are likely perfectly capable of creating a fire themselves with flint and the typical tools, I think it's highly unlikely that they would have burned the buildings. Or, even if they had, in the amount of time they had, they wouldn't have caused nearly as much destruction. Fire spreads fast, but it also still takes some time, especially when there is less oxygen (such as being at a higher altitude, but more on that later). It's more plausible that venin and wyvern burned the buildings. The color of the fire is never specified, no one even thought to ask because none of them had experienced combat with the venin yet.!<

Third, >!someone (I forget who) mentioned that the attackers had been looking for something. We now know that the gryphons and flyers were already looting outposts for more of the alloy-hilted daggers. But we also learned at the end of Fourth Wing that the venin were burning down towns and villages, also in search of something. The thing that the attackers are looking for isn't specified during the briefing.!<

Fourth, >!it has been proven that there are already venin within the wards, so therefore it would make sense that the venin knew the wards would falter, or if perhaps they even tampered with them. How would the gryphons/flyers know that the wards faltered? And why would there be alloy daggers in a village and not in an outpost?!<

Fifth, >!the attack was on a village near Chakir, which happens to be at one of the highest points of altitude in the Esben Mountains. We know that gryphons don't do well at higher altitudes, so why would they be attacking a village so high up? Why not go for somewhere easier on the gryphons? I know you can't choose when and where the wards falter, and I get that they'd take every chance that they could get to get more daggers. But otherwise, unless they were somehow really desperate to attack that specific location, it brings me again to the whole venin and wyvern thing and just adds another piece of evidence in favor of my theory.!<

All in all, I think >!that it was likely venin that attacked the village. They knew the wards would be down, possibly because someone on the inside tampered with them. They destroyed and burned the village in their search because we've already seen them do it before (or I guess, later). And it's a village, so it wouldn't have the daggers, and therefore flyers and gryphons wouldn't have reason to invade.!<

>!Why was it covered up? The obvious answer is that the professors and other higher-ups didn't want it to get revealed. We learned that many of the people in the chain of command chose to brush the idea of venin and wyver under the rug and ignore it, even to the point of trying to erase folklore. They absolutely did not want the general public finding out, and that included the students at Basgiath. Why not brief about a different attack? Maybe there wasn't anything else recent enough. They had probably been lying about attacks like this for years, so they had a lot of practice preparing to lie about this one. And if anyone ever got too close to the truth, they could just say it was above their pay-grade, as they love to do too often.!<