The Crown of Gilded Bones

The Crown of Gilded Bones is the third Blood and Ash novel, published in 2021. Poppy has the love she never expected to find and a great deal of unfinished business besides: Casteel's brother is still a prisoner, her own brother is still missing, and she has been handed a birthright she did not ask for and cannot easily put down.

The blood in Poppy's veins makes her the rightful ruler of Atlantia, which leaves her with a crown to take or a crown to refuse, and neither option is quiet. Rival powers would rather she chose nothing at all, and older forces are moving back into play behind the courts. The kingdom's religious hierarchy, the Ascended who run it and the gods the whole system answers to are all part of the argument.

The third volume pushes Poppy and Casteel past the borders they know. It moves the central question from what Poppy is to who has been running the conflict from the start, and what it would cost to end it. The pair travel further than they have before, and the answers they get make the politics of Atlantia look smaller than the forces they were standing in front of.

Armentrout published the first three Blood and Ash novels within about a year of one another, and the series later widened into further linked sets of books with their own leads. The Crown of Gilded Bones follows directly from A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire and assumes both earlier volumes have been read. It is also the point where the series starts answering questions it had been holding back since the first book.