THE EBONY QUEEN

A witch’s persecution of her stepdaughters leaves ample opportunity for dalliances in this fantasy/romance.

Following The Scarlett Mark (2020), this second installment of Lane’s A Reign of Blood and Magic series finds the sorceress Cynara presiding over the Kingdom of Velez, where she’s hated by everyone, including her son, King Lowell. She’s known as The Ebony Queen because of her mainly black wardrobe and blacker heart. Craving more dark power, she meets with the fallen angel Daemonis, who promises to help her with a mega-spell that will precipitate Ragnarök and gifts her immediately with the power to cause storms in distant places. She deploys tempests against the three stepdaughters who have fled to far-flung lands to escape her wrath. Princess Rose gets swept overboard during a storm at sea and is saved by studly pirate Edwin Perrow. Princess Scarlett, happily engaged to Lord Nicolai Graydon, gets engulfed by a sand tornado that only abates when the war god Odin gallops across the sky to her rescue atop his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. Princess Ruby and her handsome guardian Garrett Morris endure the worst ordeal after a snowstorm drives them into a cave that Cynara seals shut with lightning. A dayslong slog through a tunnel takes them to a shallow pool that they have to wade through, leaving them no alternative except to get naked and fall into each other’s arms. Meanwhile, back in Velez, Sister Mary Margaret (who is the princesses’ mother, Regana, in disguise) and the Lord Chancellor take time out from plotting against Cynara to have sex in church. And Cynara takes time out from witchery to fondle the manhood of her stable groom. Lane’s romantic fantasia is a talkfest with dialogue that’s sometimes tart and punchy (“You lie once, I take your tongue. Twice, you lose your arm”) but often overripe (“I’d plunder your lips right now, causing them to swell with desire, and I wouldn’t stop pillaging your lift until my rudder—”) or indecipherable (“The battle cry doesn’t spy her last breath until the soldier accepts his final mark”). Still, Cynara makes a compelling villain—a scene where she ferrets the truth out of Mary Margaret has a chilling ruthlessness—and the otherworldly effects are vivid and well rendered in this energetic tale.

An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.