While the Dark Remains by Joanna Ruth Meyer

While the Dark Remains by Joanna Ruth Meyer | 450 pages | 2025

Brynja spent her childhood as a captive performer in Tenebris, the imposing mountain palace of King Kallias. Every night she risked death for the king’s entertainment until his rebellious son, Prince Ballast, helped her escape. Now twenty, Brynja has never forgotten the brutal king. Or forgiven him. Under the cloak of a three-month-long Winter Dark, Brynja is returning to Tenebris for revenge.

Accompanied by a rival court, including the alluring Prince Vil, Brynja poses as diplomatic royalty to barter peace between nations. No one is better equipped to infiltrate the palace than Brynja―she remembers every hidden passage like a bad dream. But her quest to destroy Kallias is complicated by her feelings for Prince Ballast, whom she isn’t sure she can still trust. And Kallias’s own quest to mine a catastrophic weapon of war buried in the mountain’s heart will threaten them all, and force Brynja to face the darkest parts of herself.

The lives of everyone she loves depend on the choices she must make. So, too, does the fate of the world.

(Synopsis taken from Goodreads)

There was a lot to love here - court politics, an interesting pantheon, some top notch yearning, and a twist that genuinely shocked me (which feels rare these days). I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys romantic fantasy with a tiny bit of a dark bent.

An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

An Easy Death: Gunnie Rose; Book One by Charlaine Harris --- 306 pages

The idea began with a short story, The Gunnie, which Harris contributed to an anthology. What might have happened if Franklin Roosevelt had been assassinated before he could take office? That's the underlying premise behind the new alternative history trilogy from best selling suspense/fantasy author Charlaine Harris, who describes a broken America, battered by the Great Depression, and people cut adrift from all their old certainties, struggling to survive. The U.S. now consists of:

New Britannia: The original colonies (sans Georgia) have been re-annexed by Britain;.
Dixie: The old South (including Georgia) has reverted to its segregationist past;
The Holy Russian Empire: California and Oregon has been colonized by the Russian Imperial family and their devoted followers, who survived and escaped from the Revolution, with the help of "gregories" or wizards recruited by Rasputin;
New America: A Canadian-controlled portion of the northwestern U.S.
Texoma: A secessioned portion of the southwestern U.S. with few towns and less law on the raw edge of Mexico;
Indian Territory: a swathe of the central/western states reclaimed by the surviving native tribes;

The first novel of the trilogy is An Easy Death,  featuring Lizbeth Rose, an insouciant young  gunnie who is hired by a pair of Russian gregories to help them track down a descendant of Rasputin. It seems there is something in the blood of Rasputin and his direct descendants that can counteract Tsar Alexei's hemophilia.

With all the grit, suspense and action Harris's fans expect, the trilogy has already been optioned for a television series.

Click HERE to read the starred* review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read a review and preview from Entertainment Weekly.

Click HERE to read an early pre-publication review from Tor.com.

Click HERE to watch an interview with Charlaine Harris from KATU-TV2 in Portland, Oregon.

The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs

The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs --- 306 pages

The Incorruptibles is a darkly complelling fantasy concocted of ancient Rome, Wild West, Faust, Tolkien, Lovecraft and Dante, according to a blub on the back cover. Jacob pulls off  this mash-up --- after a slow start --- with such heart-pounding action that you’re left breathless and begging for more.

The halfbreed dvergar Shoestring and the renegade Fisk are hired guns escorting the daemon-powered paddle wheeler Cornelian up the Big Rill through the Hardscrabble Territories to Passasuego. On board is Senator Cornelius of Rume, acting governor of the Territories and patriarch of a noble but pathologically disfunctional family. When the Cornelians' reluctant guest, Isabelle, is kidnapped by vaettir, lethal indigenes also called “stretchers,” Shoestring and Fisk are sent to recover her. The penalty for failure isn’t just war, disgrace and death, but eternal damnation.

The novel mixes supernatural horror with the grubby realities of frontier life. Guns fire daemon-propelled bullets, and every shot takes another bite of the shooter's soul. Legionaries tote rifles and explosives, engineers call upon the powers of darkness, the vaettir take their vengeance in blood,  and gods turn out to be devils in disguise.

The references to old Norse/Germanic mythology, combined with the descriptions of the Territories, and the Roman element, also bring to mind the Magyar "cowboys" that roamed the Hungarian plains, and Rome's bloody efforts to subdue that area of eastern Europe. A stark but beautiful land, it was a lawless frontier fought over for centuries, and still bears the scars of that history today.

This is the first of a projected trilogy; the second volume, to be published next year, will be Foreign Devils.  Jacobs' background is in advertising and he hails from Arkansas.

Click HERE for a review from Fantasy Book Review (UK).

Click HERE for a review from tor.com.

Click HERE for a review and background on the author from Arkansas Times.

The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman

The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman, 352 pages

If you love dark fairy-tales, and folklore, you will love this book. It is well-written with twists and turns that will keep your head spinning. The book is very fast paced - much like Red Riding Hood - and almost as dark. It does contain some content that might not be suitable for younger readers. The publisher recommends grades 8 and up. 

Half A King by Joe Abercrombie

Half A King by Joe Abercrombie --- 333 pages

This fantasy novel is clearly inspired by Game of Thrones and its interminable sequels. Thankfully, Ambercrombie is not as prolix as George R.R. Martin. His fantasy world resembles the ancient Norse sagas, stark, bleak, unforgiving; but there is also a hint of a post-apocalypse future.

Yarvi, the younger, despised and partially disabled son of the King of Gettland succeeds to the throne when his father and elder brother are ambushed and murdered by the neighboring King of Vanster. And just as he is on the point of achieving his own ambition, to take the test and become a Minister, one of the men and women who dedicated their lives to learning and stand beside the thrones of kings.

But Yarvi finds he still has much to learn about the world, and all the forms that treachery and loyalty can take. The first in a projected trilogy: the second volume, Half A World, is scheduled for publication next year. Ambercrombie, a former film editor turned fantasy writer, lives in England.

Click HERE to check out his web site.

Faerie Winter by Jannie Lee Simner

Faerie Winter by Jannie Lee Simner, 270 pages
Book 2 of the series

Liza is a summoner. In the first part of the series, she discovers this about herself and embarks on a journey to find her mother. This series picks up where the last left off. Liza's mom is recovering from her time in Faerie. The earth is going back to normal with trees, plants, etc. no longer seeking human blood and bone like they used to, but winter lingers and a famine is setting in. Fighting a famine is bad enough, but Liza then has to deal with a stranger in the village whose gift is fire. An accident sends Matthew, Liza's skinwalker friend, off to find Kaylen, who is a faerie and a healer. Liza's visions teach her more about the relationship between Kaylen and her mother ... and hints that their love sparked the original fight between man and faerie.