Lucienne Diver has written snark and suspense with her Vamped YA series featuring a teen fashionista who goes from chic to eek when she wakes up as one of the undead, her Latter-Day Olympians series featuring a heroine who can, quite literally, stop men in their tracks, and her YA suspense novels, Faultlines, The Countdown Club and Disappeared.

The Shadow Girls, her new epic fantasy, which David B. Coe/D.B. Jackson calls, “thrilling, powerful, redemptive, and exquisitely written,” is darker in tone. In a country that’s been at war for six years due to the supposed poisoning of the king of Jucar by his queen from their rival Frizenze, three women are about to rebel against their treatment and, with allies gained along the way, fight to reshape the face of power. The problem is, one of the women is quite mad, and she is in line for the crown. The trilogy continues with The Whisper Kin (2025) and The Illuminated Lands (2026).

The Shadow Girls is close to Lucienne’s heart, touching on feminist and gender issues, LGBTQIA+ themes and climatological fantasy. Both the religion and magical system are based on animism, the spirit in all things, but also the universal spirit, the All. The mageri, the great magic men who raid the anima for the power to create their battlefield constructs to crush their enemies, are killing the land, creating deprivation and disease. And…well, much, much more.

Interested in learning more? To interview Lucienne Diver, contact her at luciennediver@gmail.com.