FORMAT/INFO: To Bargain With Mortals will be published on October 28th, 2025 by Bindery Books. It is 424 pages long and available in paperback and ebook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS:  After years of exile, Poppy Sutherland is coming home. The adopted brown daughter of the white Viceroy of colonized Viryana, she was sent to a boarding school to learn how to behave like a proper Welkish woman. Now, faced with her father's ailing health, Poppy must use all that tutelage to successfully court the likely successor to her father's position in order to secure her own future Unfortunately, a Viryan crime lord known as the Jackal has decided that Poppy is the perfect bargaining chip in his efforts to free his imprisoned brother. When the kidnapped heiress and crime lord come face to face, however, they realize that Poppy might be the key to a free Viryana.

To Bargain with Mortals is an anti-colonization fantasy that digs into the political complexities that hamper revolution. I've read a number of fantasy books with anti-colonization themes in recent years, and I appreciated that To Bargain with Mortals grappled with an issue not often tackled in those books: the fact that the oppressed people are not a monolith. It is not as simple as colonists bad, the colonized good. Instead, To Bargain with Mortals explores the fact that colonized cultures can have their own flaws to contend with. In this instance, the people of the island had their own caste culture before the white people arrived. It treated those with magical gifts as more pure and holy than people without; it caused a stratification where non-magical people were considered lesser than, unacceptable marriage partners and not worthy of higher positions in life.

As a result, this divide makes the non-magical parts of Viryan culture less willing to jump into a revolution, as they feel they've just swapped one oppressor for another. Their life won't get better with the magic users back in control, so why should they make an effort? This division forces some of the characters to reckon with their own subconscious prejudices as they try to unite their people to take back their home.

And even after that, there's a divide in how the Virians believe they should go about trying to get back equality. Some want bloody revolution; others believe there's no way to oust the colonizers, and instead they need to make compromises to get representation in the government. These differing paths often put characters against each other when they should be working with each other, a fact that feels all too reflective of the real world.

While To Bargain with Mortals has multiple POV characters, the central one to the story is Poppy. A brown orphan adopted by the white governor of the island, she has been raised to believe that her island culture is something to be ashamed of. She had the old traditions literally beaten out of her, which makes her entirely unfamiliar with her own people and their way of being.

Her journey to reconnect with her culture is the central grounding point of the story, and overall a good one. In this world, while people are inherently born with magic, their ability to wield it effectively is tied to the offerings they make to the gods. Which means that Poppy's magical strength literally comes from learning more about her people, how to relate to them, and how to worship like them. Watching her grow in confidence in both her magic and her understanding of her culture was a highlight of the book.

But it also felt like Poppy was a stand-in to be everybody's emotional punching bag. Her white father blames her when she goes outside of white conventions. Her Viryan childhood friends are quick to discount her own sufferings (including being beaten) because she didn't have it as bad as them. White society dismisses her as a mongrel who has stepped above her station. While Poppy does indeed have growth to do (and does accomplish growth over the course of the story), there were many points where it felt like she simply could not win. And again, perhaps this is all too indicative of real life and the experiences of those who are caught between cultures, not white enough for one and not brown enough for another.

But given Poppy's struggles and her own naivete about the world, I struggled a bit to believe in Poppy's political journey towards the end of the book. There comes a point where she needs to find a way to gather political power from across the groups of the island; given how disregarded she was by many groups, I found it a bit hard to buy into her having a chance at success at successfully uniting any kind of resistance.

To Bargain with Mortals excels at grappling with political struggles of revolution, at how internal struggles in a movement can undercut their ability to succeed. But while I loved Poppy's overall journey of rediscovering her heritage, I wish I believed in her slightly more as a leader.

 

Read FBC's interview with Olivia

Book links: Amazon, Goodreads

FORMAT/INFO: Savage Blooms will be published on October 9th, 2025 by Orbit Books. It is 464 pages long and available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Adam has spent being told stories by his grandfather of an enchanted place known as Craigmar. So when his grandfather passes away, Adam, along with his best friend Nicola, decides to seek out the isolated manor in Scotland. But what starts as a simple holiday jaunt becomes something entirely else when Adam and Nicola not only find Craigmar, but meet its owner Eileen and her groundskeeper Finley. Adam at first is thrilled that Eileen will allow him to stay and investigate the manor's past in the hopes of learning more about his grandfather. But the longer Adam and Nicola stay at Craigmar, the more they become drawn into Eileen and Finley's seductive games - all of which may serve a nefarious purpose.

Savage Blooms is an atmospheric gothic tale that drags out a thin plot to an underwhelming conclusion. I will say that the author initially did an excellent job of setting up the tension and the mood. There's a fantastic sense of foreboding and all the hallmarks of the gothic romance the story wants to be. You have an isolated, decaying house, a windswept moor, and mysterious characters clearly harboring secrets. It isn’t long before we know that the family of Craigmar has a dark history tied with threatening faerie magic. I enjoyed the sense of danger lurking unseen and waited for the trap to be sprung.

Unfortunately, that’s about as much as you’re going to get in this 450 page book: unseen dangers. Information is revealed at a glacial pace. While there’s mysterious voices, strange lights, brief moments of peril, and the tease of a sinister plot, all that tension leads to a truly underwhelming finale. For hundreds of pages, Eileen and Finley’s POV chapters have them brooding over their guilt at how Adam and Nicola will feel betrayed when their plot is revealed. And yet when their grand plans came to light, it was absolutely nothing that lived up to my expectations for what their big evil secret could possibly be. It’s the kind of ending that makes you go, “I waited 400 pages for THAT?”

Here's the thing: I think the grand plan DOES make sense. It's just that there was such a build up and so much hand-wringing by Finley and Eileen over what they planned to do, that I was completely baffled at the simplicity of what they wanted, ESPECIALLY given that I had to wait until the last few chapters of the book to find out. If the reveal had come at the halfway point, it would have landed a lot better.

Given that this was marketed as erotica, I tried to go in open minded about some of the story elements I might encounter. I tried very hard to accept that four people come together (more specifically two pairs of people come together) and immediately all insta-lust after each other. And not only is everyone into everyone, everyone is okay sharing. This is an erotica, and the name of the game is people having sex. But by the end of the book, it was beginning to feel like the plot was a checklist to make sure that every single character had hooked up with every other character, and I found myself bored, not titillated.

CONCLUSION: I would have given all that a pass if the premise had lived up to the promise. This is, after all, about an unnerving pair of people (Eileen and Finley) hiding dark secrets, who are slowly ensnaring another pair of people (Adam and Nicola) into their world. If the overall plot had moved faster and delivered a more satisfying ending, I would have said it was a solid read, if ultimately not for me. But unfortunately, Savage Blooms wastes its premise and atmosphere, leaving me uninterested in the sequel.