Rosamund Hodge Books In Order

Publication Order of Bright Smoke, Cold Fire Books

Publication Order of Fairy Tales Books

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Rosamund Hodge is an author who grew up in Los Angeles where she was home schooled. She was a voracious reader and she spent all her free time reading any written material, and her most popular genre was mythology and fantasy. Her other interests include T.S. Eliot poetry and Hello Kitty. She attained a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Dallas and a Masters in Medieval English from Oxford. She now resides in Seattle where she works with computers. She is also your favorite fantasy novelist and some of the books that she’s written include Cruel Beauty and Gilded Ashes.

When her elder brother was thirteen, he started a writing club with his friends and wouldn’t let her join because she was only eight. So she vowed to become a successful writer to make him feel sorry. So far, her elder brother still is not sorry, and she actually checked. The good news is that in 2014, she was able to publish her first novel, so it seems like everything has worked out just fine. Besides writing, she has other interests, including practicing Shorinji Kempo, which is a form of Japanese martial arts that was inspired by Shaolin Kung Fu.

The first novel that Rosamund Hodge published is Cruel Beauty and it is a novel where Greek mythology meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl’s journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way by stealing her heart. This dazzling romantic story is about our innermost desires, which have the power of changing our destiny. The main character in the story is called Nyx. Ever since she was born, she’s been engaged to marry an evil ruler just because her father had been foolish enough to strike a bargain. And since she was born, she’s been training to kill the evil ruler.

Nyx must fulfill the requirements of her betrothal and she hates her family because they never tried to rescue her from the forced marriage. She also starts to resent herself because of trying to evade her destiny. Still, when she turns seventeen, she abandons everything that she had ever known in order to get married to the powerful and immortal Ignifex. Nyx then comes up with a plan to save herself from the clutches of the evil ruler, which involves seducing him, destroying his magical castle, and then breaking a 900-year old curse that he had placed on her fellow citizens.

But things don’t go according to plan because for some strange reason, Ignifex is quite charming and he manages to beguile her. His castle is also a maze of enchanted rooms that enthrall Nyx. Even though she is looking for a solution to freeing her homeland through uncovering the ruler’s secrets, she can’t help but be attracted to him. So even if Nyx could somehow love her mortal enemy, she still has a duty to eliminate him. At the end of the day, Nyx must choose between love and the future prosperity of her motherland.

The second book that Rosamund Hodge has written is called Gilded Ashes, and it is a classic reimagining of the classic Cinderella fairy tale, and it is set in the same world as her debut novel, Cruel Beauty. The book tells us the story of an orphan called Maia who doesn’t think that love is important because it only leads to pain. When her mother was on her deathbed, she bargained with an evil and all-powerful ruler that if anyone hurt her daughter, they should suffer punishment. When Maia’s father passed away, her stepmother was inconsolable while her stepsisters desperately sought the approval of their mother who always dismissed them.

Maia’s family have now made her their loathed servant and to cope with the situation, she feigned happiness or else they will all be killed by her dying mother’s curse. Enter Anax, an heir to a duke who also does not believe in fairytale love-not since discovering his childhood lover only faked her love because she wanted to use his nobility for her own selfish reasons.

He saw no reason to fake love for a woman who in turn will fake her love towards him. However, his father sends an invitation to all eligible maidens in the land to a masked banquet and so Anax has to finally cave in and choose a wife. Fate conspires to bring Maia to Anax when she was helping prepare for the ball, and she was sent to bring letters to him. Their first encounter is prickly but he is soon charmed by her. He starts wishing he could have a chance of seeing her again, and when he finally does, he is smitten. Even though she doesn’t want to, Maia also starts to have feeling for the heir.

Even though Gilded Ashes is inspired by the classic Cinderella story, it has a dark theme and life is not a bed of roses. It’s not an enchanting and heart-warming tale and some readers may not like what they find between the pages of this book. The fact that Maia must fake her happiness is a sad state of affairs and it appears as if she has been curse to a life of fake happiness while she is dying inside. She has to fake her happiness in order to protect the very people who would wish to do her harm, which is kind of ironic.

Just because Maia is a victim of circumstances doesn’t mean that she is an angel. So many times she uses the words stupid, fool and foolish to describe her mother, stepmother and stepsisters. Even the prince is not spared, but maybe that was a defense mechanism in order to shield her from the reality of her situation. That aside, the story is actually very good but perhaps the author should have taken more time to describe how Maia’s dying mother bargained with the evil ruler. Anyway, being a newly published author, Rosamund Hodge has done a decent job and I’m sure that she will get even better as she continues to learn while doing what she does best.