Held in an enemy kingdom with both prince and assassin at her side, the runaway princess must survive a court of knives.
- Score
- 78.9
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- first
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise Lia as a standout YA heroine — principled, empathetic, and never passive even under captivity — and the expanded Vendan world-building as the series' strongest element. The Komizar is widely described as a genuinely threatening antagonist. The most common criticism is that the middle section drags before a tension-packed finale, and some readers find the love triangle frustrating despite acknowledging Lia never truly wavers. The cliffhanger ending draws both admiration and irritation. Most agree it improves significantly on book one.
Read it if
- · Readers who want a YA heroine who grows politically as well as romantically
- · Fans of court intrigue and captivity arcs with moral complexity
- · Readers who can tolerate a love triangle when the protagonist stays clear-headed
Skip it if
- · Love triangles are a hard dealbreaker — it persists through this book
- · You need a satisfying standalone ending; this ends on a cliffhanger
- · You want high spice or explicit romance in your romantasy
If you liked this
- · For fans of An Ember in the Ashes — similar captivity-under-empire tension with a morally complex cast
- · Like Throne of Glass but YA-leaner and with stronger political world-building
- · For fans of Graceling — fierce heroine navigating kingdoms that have lied to her about who the real enemy is
In this series
Part of The Remnant Chronicles — read in order:
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