Zera, a Heartless, tries to take the prince’s heart to stop a war in the first book. Having failed at that, the second book involves an entirely new plot to stop the same war. There are a lot of big surprises, and I don’t want to spoil them for anyone, so I’m going to be really vague about the storyline.

What the author does splendidly is look at the situation from all angles. You see the good and bad of every decision, every character, every fight. No one is the “good guy”. They’re all human, even the ones that technically aren’t. It’s rapidly paced fantasy with heart, and I adore it. Anyone who likes anything should read these books, because they’ve got a little bit of something for everyone: romance, adventure, gore, wyrms, magic, suspense, fantastic character-building, and moral questions.