A spy with hidden magic infiltrates a glittering fae court to free her people — and the cold prince watching her is no fool.
- Score
- 78.3
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Mild
- POV
- first
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
If you liked this, read
What readers think
Readers consistently praise the charged, slow-burn tension between Prisca and Lorian and the entertaining banter in their dual-POV narration. The found-family dynamic among the mercenary group earns warm praise as a highlight of the series. Critics point to thin worldbuilding and an underexplained magic system as the book's clearest weaknesses, and a significant portion of reviewers find the pacing uneven — slow and repetitive in the first half before accelerating sharply. Comparisons to ACOTAR are near-universal, and opinion splits on whether the book carves out its own identity or leans too heavily on familiar genre scaffolding.
Read it if
- · ACOTAR fans craving a new enemies-to-lovers fae-adjacent series to binge
- · Readers who prioritise romantic tension and banter over intricate worldbuilding
- · Fans of mercenary found-family dynamics alongside a slow-burn central romance
Skip it if
- · You want rich, original worldbuilding with a well-defined magic system
- · You're fatigued by ACOTAR-adjacent premises and grumpy-mercenary archetypes
- · Pacing inconsistency frustrates you — the first half moves slowly with repetitive beats
If you liked this
- · For fans of A Court of Thorns and Roses who want a self-published indie take on fae-adjacent romantasy
- · Like From Blood and Ash but with a mercenary hero and a politically fractured kingdom
- · For readers who loved the forbidden-magic-and-brooding-love-interest formula of Jennifer L. Armentrout's Blood and Ash series
In this series
Part of Kingdom of Lies — read in order:
Full series profile & spice/trope breakdown →Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
Take the quiz →