A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire is the second Blood and Ash novel, published in 2020, and it begins with everything Poppy believed rewritten. The man she had started to love has been serving a plan of his own the whole time, and the people around her now treat her as a token of the kingdom they are trying to win rather than as someone whose opinion counts.

The man in question is Casteel Da'Neer, the Prince of Atlantia, and he needs Poppy alive and whole for reasons of his own. She needs him for her own: her brother Ian is still missing, and reaching him runs through Atlantia and its court. The second volume widens the map accordingly, moving the story out of Poppy's home kingdom and into the one she has been taught to fear.

Atlantia is waiting for its prince and riven by factions, some of which would prefer Poppy gone and some of which would prefer her useful. The abilities she is only beginning to understand make her more valuable and more feared wherever she goes, and the people around her disagree about whether she should be protected, used or removed. The second book also spends more time on the kingdom's history, which turns out to have been rewritten in the version Poppy was raised on.

Armentrout keeps both leads close, so the story runs on the argument between them as much as the politics around them. The Crown of Gilded Bones followed in 2021, and the series continued to expand into further sets of books. This second volume assumes the first has been read, and it turns the first book's revelation into a journey.