Release Date: 15 July 2025
SPOILER ALERT: This is book 2 in a doulogy. Check out this review instead if you haven’t read book 1: ‘The Jasad Heir’ by Sara Hashem
Sylvia, the chemist’s apprentice and Champion of Nizhal, is gone. Only Essiya remains now, Queen of Jasad. No longer supressed, Essiya’s magic reigns free and it is a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately it is not her enemies that seem to be the main target, but her mind. With armies rallying against them the Jasadi’s have only one hope: raise the fortress of Jasad. The last person to raise the fortress died, but Essiya isn’t concerned about that. She’ll take a hero’s death over going insane and killing everyone. Her only worry is whether she can hold onto her sanity long enough to raise the fortress. And whether a certain Nizhal Heir will try to stop her, either to save her life or to destroy her people.
The slow burn enemies to lovers reaches peak tension in this book as Arin and Essiya stand on opposite sides of a decades old war. Every decision they make is driven by both love and anger, a balancing act which seems to work surprisingly well for them. Arin’s strategic mind comes into full play in this book and, despite the distance and opposition, they manage to work together to reach the joint goal of peace. This is thanks to the work done in the first book to build up their relationship to a point where they can now predict each other’s movements and the reasoning behind them; a very clever form of character development from Sara Hashem. I also love how in the first book their own secrets tore them apart and in this one the secrets of others work to bring them back together.
Individually the characters also go through a lot of development in this book, both learning to give freedom to their emotions instead of locking them away or ignoring them. Essiya learns how to think of others and make decisions for the greater good instead of purely for survival. She also begins to heal from the trauma of her childhood, embracing who she is and letting other in. Arin’s development is a lot more explosive. His logical world view also takes a massive hit, which leaves him fragmented and unstable. Instead of learning to let more people is, he faces a hard lesson about trust and who really deserves his. Only when they are together do these new versions of themselves make sense.
I found the ending of this book immensely satisfying. It has sacrifice and loss and grief, but it also has hope, healing and a touch of magic.
Escape to the Bookshelf 
I loved the Jasad Heir and am really looking forward to reading the second part of the duology. I’m glad to hear that it had such a satisfying end
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