This Vicious Dream by Stacia Stark is the first book in the Kingdom of Death duology, a spin-off of the Kingdom of Lies series. It’s a sweeping fantasy romance built on the cruelty of tyrants and the power of feminine rage, and I loved every single page.
Madinia Farrow once helped save a kingdom, but now she’s trapped in a tower with her sanity long gone, drained by a dark power she never should have touched. But it’s that same power that protects her from Queen Vicana and her right-hand man, who will stop at nothing to find the source.
A strange man appears in the woods surrounding her tower, filled with the same rage that powers her, looking for something he lost centuries ago. His instincts scream at him that Madinia is his key to finding it.
As they travel together looking for this lost thing, trying to escape Queen Vicana and her armies, Madinia’s memory begins to return, and she finds out there’s much more to this man than she could have ever imagined.
These characters have a multitude of layers, and both Madinia and Calysian have some level of amnesia for parts of the book, which makes it fascinating to read as we get to know them and they get to know themselves and each other.
I notoriously love an imperfect, dysfunctional heroine and Madinia is exactly that. She’s rude and her emotional walls are built with enough strength to keep out an army. She turns her fear into rage, sometimes with disastrous results, and she is enchanting to read for all her flaws.
Madinia and Calysian have such a fiery spark between them, even when it’s fueled by irritation. They are such clever characters with such sarcastic bites. They spend much of the book comically in denial about their situation and it is such fun. I will never get enough of these two.
This Vicious Dream starts with immediate action, and the plot remains fast-moving and engaging throughout the story. Madinia and Calysian are on a quest, which felt like a very classic framework for an epic fantasy like this, and one that worked beautifully.
Readers will have to be patient with Madinia and Calysian because their story is a slow burn, and even once they look like they might move forward, they take three steps back. I wanted to yell at them through the pages, but it kept me completely hooked. The spice is sparing as a result, but the moments we get are filled with passion and chemistry.
I was lucky enough to get an advanced reader copy of This Vicious Dream, but it will be released to the public on May 13th, 2025. It’s the first book in a duology, and be warned it ends on a cliffhanger. The next book, This Ancient Feud, doesn’t have a release date yet.
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