OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Kit Rocha is the pseudonym for co-writing team Donna Herren and Bree Bridges. After penning dozens of paranormal novels, novellas, and stories as Moira Rogers, they reinvented themselves by writing the nine-book, multiple award-winning—and extremely steamy—Beyond series, which became an instant cult favorite. They followed it up with two spin-off series, including the popular Mercenary Librarians trilogy published by Tor.

Their favorite stories are about messy worlds, strong women, and falling in love with the people who love you just the way you are. When they’re not writing, you can find them making handmade jewelry, caring too much about video games, or freaking out about their favorite books, all of which are chronicled on their various social media accounts.

FORMAT/INFO: Queen of Dreams was published by Montlake on August 6th, 2024. It is 415 pages long and is told from multiple POVs, including Sachi, Ash, and Zanya. It is available in ebook, audiobook and paperback formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: After centuries of peace, the Court of Dreamers suddenly finds itself with enemies on all sides. It's bad enough that the royal court of mortals seems determined to break all ties with gods, declaring their followers heretics to be slaughtered. But an even worse threat has emerged: the god known as the Betrayer. After thousands of years of isolation on another continent, the Betrayer has reappeared - and he's got his sights set on Sachi, coveting her deep connection to the Dream itself. Sachi's lovers, the dragon god Ash and fierce warrior Zanya, have vowed to protect her. But when Sachi finds herself at the heart of the Betrayer's court, she'll have to use her own skills of seduction and political maneuvering to find a way to tear down the Betrayer's rule from within.

Queen of Dreams is a pulse-pounding finale to this fantasy romance duology, getting the heart racing with both scorching love scenes and epic battles. While the focus of book one, Consort of Fire, was largely on the developing relationship between Ash, Sachi, and Zanya, this second book puts the brewing world politics more front and center. Our main characters and the rest of the gods in the Court of Dreamers are gearing up for a war on two fronts, and they're fighting with every tool in their arsenal. There's politicking to be had at royal banquets, training of latent magical gifts, and a truly impressive climactic battle scene on the scale of gods.

The one slight downside here is that the romance itself ends up being more of a subplot. To be sure, there's still growth and development that happens over the course of the story, especially with Zanya. After her past traumas, she finds it a struggle to allow herself to be vulnerable in a relationship, making it difficult to find her place in the evolving relationship between herself, Sachi, and Ash. But while Consort of Fire had a fairly steady stream of spice (that fully leant itself to character and relationship development), Queen of Dreams ends up largely containing the spice to bookend the main plot in two major scenes. While those scenes absolutely earn every aspect of the description "scorching," I did find myself wishing they had been a little more spread out across the novel.

I have to take a moment to shout out Aleksi, the god known as the Lover. Although he only gets to shine in a couple of scenes, he absolutely stole my heart in his brief appearances - which is fantastic news because he will be one of the lead characters in the next duology set in this world! My hat's off to the writers, you did an excellent job of getting me salivating for your next work with just a few short scenes.

CONCLUSION: I have absolutely fallen in love with the world of the Court of Dreamers. I love the larger than life gods, I love the acceptance of love in all its forms, I love the epic stakes and equally epic battles. These books have joined the ranks of my gold standards for blending romance and epic fantasy, and I will absolutely be back for the next installment.

OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Saara El-Arifi is the internationally bestselling author of The Ending Fire Trilogy and the Faebound Trilogy inspired by her Ghanaian and Sudanese heritage. She has lived in many countries, had many jobs, and owned many more cats. 

After a decade of working in marketing and communications, she returned to academia to complete a master’s degree in African studies alongside her writing career. El-Arifi knew she was a storyteller from the moment she told her first lie. Over the years, she has perfected her tall tales into epic ones. She currently resides in London as a full-time procrastinator.

FORMAT/INFO: The Ending Fire was published by Del Rey on September 10th, 2024. It is 512 pages long and told in third person from multiple POVs, including Hassa, Sylah, and Anoor. It is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS:  After weeks and months of simmering tension, war is breaking out across the land. The Wardens face a rebellion within their capital city, but what neither side realizes is that a much deadlier force is preparing to march on them. The Zalaam have found their Child of Fire, and with their arrival, are ready to launch an assault to wipe their enemies from the map. It will take an alliance of nations to stand against the Zalaam and their god-forged creations - but even that might not be enough.

The Ending Fire takes a while to rev up, but when the final battle arrives, it's a heart pounding conclusion. This is one of those books where I'm going to recommend you have a fairly solid grasp of the factions and characters going into the finale, because I certainly struggled to lift the fog from my memory during the early pages of the book. There are a plethora of factions and types of magic at this stage of the game, and they are all crashing together in this finale. The first third of the book is an absolute whirlwind tour around the map, checking in at various locations; my struggles to remember who was who definitely hampered my ability to connect with characters, making the early parts of the book a bit slower for me.

I found Anoor's storyline the most compelling, as she struggles to find meaning and purpose in her new situation (to say more would be more spoilers than I care to share). Suffice to say, I empathized with her situation, as she is thrown into an unfamiliar land and wants to believe that those who surround her truly want the best for her and for the world. It's not easy to watch, but given the specific circumstances Anoor is in, I can buy the justification machine that she turns on in her head to give a pass to things that make her uneasy.

Hassa also has a good arc, finally hitting the point where she is no longer content to pretend to be a meek servant, but ready to stand up in open defiance of the world. She is the true heart of the story, trying to lift her people out of oppression without losing sight of the fact that they have to have a moral code at the center, or they risk becoming just as bad as their oppressors.

What really made me struggle with The Ending Fire, however, were the various romantic relationships. There was a lot of eleventh hour drama that felt manufactured and drawn out; when characters did finally get together, there were incredibly rushed scenes of spice that were over in a page. It made the culmination of the relationship feel perfunctory, a check box marked instead of a beautiful union. I don't mind spice in the slightest, but I honestly think in this case that a fade-to-black would have been the better move here. It ironically would have made the beat feel longer and more heartfelt by leaving it to the reader to fill in what happened, rather than throwing a few paragraphs on the page and calling it a day.

On the bright side, however, I do think the final battle itself is well done. After limiting the POV to our three main characters (Sylah, Hassa, and Anoor), the story opens up and jumps around to multiple side characters, letting us see pivotal moments across the battlefield, full of both heartbreak and joyous success. It's hard to put those final chapters down as multiple factions wage war for the fate of the world.

CONCLUSION: The Ending Fire had a lot to wrangle in this final book, and it definitely shows. There's a lot of rush to get pieces into place, an effort that can make the story feel both rushed and meandering at the same time. That perhaps isn't surprising given the expansiveness of the world-building, but it does make this last installment feel a bit uneven. There are definitely moments when the book shines, but it's not as well-executed a landing as I hoped.