A queen, her secret-mage bodyguard, and a dragonrider on the far side of the world race to stop an ancient wyrm from waking.
- Score
- 80.8
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- multi
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise Shannon's fearless world-building — two fully realised continents with distinct cultures, religions, and dragon mythologies — and her lyrical, confident prose that handles 848 pages without feeling bloated. The central F/F romance between Ead and Sabran is beloved for its restraint and emotional payoff, described repeatedly as 'elite-tier lesbian yearning.' A major revelatory twist at roughly the 75% mark is frequently cited as a highlight. Common criticisms focus on the slow start and the way the four POV storylines feel disconnected for the first two-thirds of the book, requiring patience before they converge into a genuinely epic finale. A minority of readers find the romance underdeveloped relative to how much the narrative builds toward it, and some find certain POV characters less compelling than Ead.
Read it if
- · Readers who want a truly standalone epic fantasy (880 pages, complete story) with queer and feminist themes at its core
- · Fans of intricate, dual-mythology dragon lore who enjoy East-vs-West cultural world-building
- · Readers who prize slow-burn sapphic romance embedded in high political stakes and a satisfying convergent plot
Skip it if
- · You need fast pacing or quickly converging storylines — the book requires 300–400 pages of setup across separate POVs
- · You want explicit or prominent romance — spice is minimal and the romantic arc is largely secondary to the epic plot
- · Dense, old-fashioned high-fantasy prose is a deterrent for you
If you liked this
- · For fans of The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden) — mythology-steeped world-building, a fierce female protagonist, and an ancient supernatural threat
- · For fans of A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin) — political court intrigue, sweeping multi-POV epic scope, and high-stakes dragon conflict, but with feminist and queer themes throughout
- · For fans of Graceling (Kristin Cashore) — feminist high fantasy with a powerful heroine, court politics, and a relationship built on mutual respect rather than passion
- · For fans of The Jasmine Throne (Tasha Suri) — sapphic romance woven into epic fantasy with rich non-Western-influenced world-building and a slow-burn central pairing
Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
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