FORMAT/INFO:  The Eye of Leviathan was published on July 14th, 2026. It is 499 pages and available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Eye of Leviathan is a juxtaposition of whimsy and harsh reality that makes for a brutal examination of religious conversion and colonialism. Many readers will come to this having devoured the author duo's previous series, and I want to set the tone for what you're getting. The Rook & Rose trilogy (one of my all time favorites) is what I would call a "romantic adventure" fantasy. There's lavish balls, masked vigilantes, duels, con artists, crime lords with hearts of gold, all the trappings of a good old time. There's of course danger in it, but it's all a dashing affair.

The Eye of Leviathan, however, is darker in tone. It's a historical fantasy, grounded in an alternate version of our world where the Spanish have discovered a doorway to a faerie realm they call the Sea Beyond. In this history, Spain has given up its claim to the New World (the Americas) in favor of conquering this magical world instead.

The Sea Beyond is full of all the wonder you would expect. There's enchantments, strange creatures, terrible faeries who use the truth to lie to your face, and a whole ocean of moving islands. It's not perfect and it's not a utopia, but it's its own place and has its own culture and way of doing things. When the Spanish arrive, however, they immediately set about shaping the Sea Beyond into their view of how the world should be. Islands are literally pinned down, with some inhabitants slaughtered and others facing a cruel fate: baptism, which removes a faerie's immortality and makes them magically enslaved to those who hold their name. It's not a subtle metaphor, but it's certainly an effective one.

We see all this from two POVs: Estevan, a changeling masquerading as a human to infiltrate the Spanish colonization efforts to disrupt them from the inside, and the Hungry Girl, the mortal child Estevan replaced as a baby who has grown up in faerie and never seen another human until Spanish Conquistadors arrive. Estevan's POV is the more challenging of the two to get acclimated with, as we watch him assume the form of a child and grow over several years. It serves as an introduction to the world, but also required me to brush the cobwebs off my old history education as I tried to place the many names and places that get rattled off at the beginning of the story to establish this alternate history of events. I admit the early chapters were a little rough going because of that, as I struggled to remember what was factual in our world, and what changes had been made for this alternate history.

The Hungry Girl, meanwhile, was an easier character to get to know. Having grown up in wondrous faerie, she knows the ways in which the realm operates. But having never met another human, she is incredibly naive as to how they operate. When she meets the Spanish, she accepts everything they tell her must be true, because these are the only humans she's met and surely they must know the proper way of the world. But as she becomes complicit in their crimes, she starts to question and grow and start to unpack what her people are truly up to.

And that truly is the harshest part of the book, seeing all the beauty and wonder slowly be enslaved and corrupted. Through it all, the Hungry Girl has to wrestle with the hypocrisies and confused messaging of her people, as they tell her the proper way to be, the proper people to hate, the proper religion to follow. I do wish the Hungry Girl had questioned things a little more instead of taking what humans say at face value. After all, she's spent her whole life amongst fae creatures who know how to twist their words to hide their motivations.

The story cuts back and forth between alternating timelines that slowly converge, as Estevan goes through adulthood and embarks upon his present day career. This was where the story started to pick up for me, as the journeys of these two people drew together. Up to that point, I struggled a bit sometimes with feeling a real drive to Estevan's story, as he pursues his career without a real end goal in sight. This book was definitely on the slower side at times, and while I appreciated the magical metaphors, I didn't fully see where the climax was going.

The Eye of Leviathan excels as a condemnation of colonialism while struggling a bit with the overall story. The ending didn't quite catapult me to the sequel; it simply closes one chapter with the promise of a part two. And it felt slower than the ROOK & ROSE books; while those books took me a while to get to, I was so enraptured with the world and the characters I didn't care. This just felt slow overall, especially with some extremely lengthy chapters. It is still a good book overall, but it didn't hit the heights I was hoping of the authors' previous work. 

 

FORMAT/INFO: Sunsplitter will be published by Orbit Books on August 4th, 2026. It is 608 pages long and available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Sunsplitter is the spicy action-packed follow-up to Voidwalker and it manages to deftly balance romance, action, and character in one fantastic finale. What I especially appreciated about this sequel was that it managed to find conflict between the couple of Fi and Antal (human and monstrous daeyari respectively) that felt natural and earned and not forced to create drama. Antal may have found the love of his life in Fi, but he's grappling with the fact that he has been isolated from his own people for decades, and he may have to continue that isolation to protect the human-friendly community he and Fi are building. There's a real exploration of how being cut off from your own culture is a devastating loss of connection - even if you have mixed feelings about the individual people in that culture. Fi in return struggles to figure out if she's "enough" for Antal - if she can fill the void that lost connection creates.

This conflict felt like a natural rough patch in a relationship, especially one where family members don't approve of the match. And eventually, they do call each other out and work through their issues, becoming even stronger for it. If I had one area where I had a complaint, it's that I wish Antal had had a little more initiative towards the end of the book, instead of letting old patterns continue to rule.

Aside from the romance, there's an engaging action-packed plot with a splash of politics as a dangerous foe threatens not just Antal's territory, but daeyari rule everywhere. I was fully invested in this new enemy, though I could have stood to learn a little more about them than we did. Either way, this new threat gives us the excuse to peek behind the curtain at the council that rules how daeyari live and govern on their home turf, and I welcomed the addition of new characters from Antal's past. They provide their own complications as Antal tries to figure out who - if any - of his former friends and relatives he can trust.

I'll also just give a quick mention to the fact that this is a spicier book than Voidwalker. While there was definitely spice in the first book, the author here leans full-tilt into the "monster smut" aspect of the book. There is plenty of non-spice plot in here too, but if those kinds of scenes aren't your cup of tea, you might be better off with another book.

Sunsplitter was a fantastic sequel to a book I really enjoyed. Voidwalker was one of my favorite reads of 2025 and I have a feeling Sunsplitter is going to end the year with the same glowing honor.

Sergei relives his mother’s tragic death in nightmares every night… but he’s the only one who believes she’s still alive.

Sergei lives an ordinary 1980’s American life… but every night he travels back to the frozen Russian lake where his mother made the ultimate sacrifice for her children’s freedom. So when a mysterious woman tells him his mother is alive, he jumps at the chance to find her.

The problem? The only clue to her whereabouts is an otherworldly book written in a language no one has ever seen before.

Lured into a risky game of cloak and dagger with a shadowy government cabal that wants his mother as badly as he does, Sergei will risk everything to find the truth. But when his nightmares start bleeding into reality, his double life might tear his family completely apart before he has a chance to bring them back together.

The clock is ticking. With one last chance to save his mother from the ruthless forces plotting to use her, can Sergei make it in time... Or will everyone he loves suffer the consequences?

Book links: Goodreads / Amazon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for Tom Holt.

According to the biographical notes in some of Parker's books, Parker has previously worked in law, journalism, and numismatics, and now writes and makes things out of wood and metal. It is also claimed that Parker is married to a solicitor and now lives in southern England. According to an autobiographical note, Parker was raised in rural Vermont, a lifestyle which influenced Parker's work.

Publisher: Orbit (May 12, 2026) Page count: 336 Formats: audio, ebook, pp