After Ever After, Book Three: The Queen’s Rain

Can four queens who have finally transformed from fairy-tale princess to empowered sovereigns be accepted now by their own peoples? They begin Book Three of the After Ever After trilogy, The Queen’s Rain, in exile, with only the Dark Faerie witch and their own intuitions to guide them. Queen Rowan (once Snow White) haunts the northern primeval lands, sometimes as prey surrendering to her lover’s dagger and sometimes as the regal predator to whom he sacrifices himself to heal the land: she is the spirit of her people who lures them home again to their true wild kingdom. Priestess Lemara (once Sleeping Beauty), both ancient and innocent, dreamer and dancer, returns broken-hearted and alone to her own people at last, teaching them feminine ceremonies of healing that challenge the new priestess’ warring, practical vision. Queen Ella (once Cinderella) recovers from grief and regains her magic in the ghost realm with the help of forbidden Barbarian lovers and friends. She hopes to reclaim her kingdom from these same Barbarians, not only by battle, but by a woman’s story of watery whispering, sacred seduction and courageous communication. And Queen Mina with King Nicolai (once Beauty and the Beast), keepers of their people’s darkest fears and secret shame, invent a new kind of mutable sovereignty, one which dares to defend all queens not by denying witchcraft but by celebrating it. Seeking lost loved ones in other worlds, confronted by the ancestral pain of each other’s children, wounded by the misguided violence and despair of brothers, princes, and kings, the four queens admire, challenge, and dream each other across the generations-to reclaim the feminine aspect of the divine and reweave the many lands into wholeness.

In this finale of the After Ever After trilogy, the four protagonists all rethread their personal, political, cultural and environmental lives in the aftermath of the Barbarian invasion of Book Two. Mina must deal with the refugees who nearly overwhelm her small kingdom; Ella tries to balance her exiled crown and ambivalence toward the magic that got her there in the first place; Lemara tries to bring vital ritual back to her now-desiccated forest to return meaning back to her people; and Rowan learns to embrace the mystery of her mother, the Dark Faerie Riannon, in order to help her royal sisters from another dimension. The Queen’s Rain is a thrilling finish to a landmark series.