Price range: £5.99 through £9.99
A new gothic fantasy standalone that combines the gaslamp fantasy of C. L. Polk’s Witchmark with the slow-burn rivals-to-lovers romance of Isabel Agajanian’s Modern Divination and the whimsy of Howl’s Moving Castle.
When a king calls a hunt for a phoenix in a deadly, magical forest, wizard Sy jumps at the chance. Years ago, he indentured himself to pay for his magical education, binding him by unbreakable spell to the wicked king. The prize is just enough to pay off his debt. He can’t split it. Neither can he survive the forest alone. He seeks Anya, a skilled huntress who lives on the forest’s edge, and lies about splitting the money.
But Anya is lying, too. Cursed by a vengeful witch after killing her familiar, Anya must find the phoenix and bind it to her before the summer solstice. Until then, she will suffer a gruesome transformation. With the forest swarming with wizards, she needs one on her side – for now.
Neither can split the prize. Neither can win alone. Betrayal is their only option.
But anything can happen in the wood.
And the wood is hungry.
“S. E. Kiser’s lyrical storytelling enchants like the wild itself in this quest for the impossible laced with dark magic and yearning.”
– Ruth Frances Long
“In Hunt the Ever Wild, S.E. Kiser has crafted a dark story of societal entrapment and hidden desires, which gallops along like a twisted fairytale. An enticing and original fantasy story, the Lichtenwald forest will get under your skin almost as deeply as the characters who try to tame it.”
– Laura Elliot, author of Awakened
“Kiser crafts a vibrant landscape where the glossy veneer of civilization digs questing fingers into the vicious, untamed, and inexplicable. Alive with timely societal parallels in the moral compromises of fettered city scribes, this is a glorious lyrical debut that haunts long after the reader exits its sentient forest.”
– Shalini Abeysekara, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of This Monster of Mine
“Hunt the Ever Wild is an exquisite debut, full of all my favorite things: enchanted forests, a city that glitters as it rots, and a romance that sparkles. Through a gaslamp fairy tale of a world, the story grapples with the true meaning of beauty, riches, and the wild. There is such materiality in Kiser’s writing: to read is to be swallowed by the Lichtenwald, by the flora and fauna and magic. If you love folkloric, romantic tales like Howl’s Moving Castle, this book is for you.”
– Rebecca Brodkey, author of Darker Than the Starless Night
“As lush and evocative as a forest after a rainstorm, Hunt the Ever Wild is a stunning debut. Readers are sure to lose themselves in this fairy tale of a novel, where each twist and turn feels like it’s pulling you deeper into a spell. A must-read for anyone who loves fantasy, romance, and enchantment that practically ripples beneath the page.”
– Stacy Sivinski, national bestselling author of The Crescent Moon Tearoom
