While the Dark Remains

The Winter Dark, Book 1

De: Joanna Ruth Meyer

Narrado por: Kimberly Woods

In an icebound palace of magic and menace, a young woman plots to outwit a cruel king in a bracing fantasy about love, found family, and immeasurable revenge.

Brynja spent her childhood as a captive performer in Tenebris, the imposing mountain palace of King Kallias. Every night she risked death for the king’s entertainment until his rebellious son, Prince Ballast, helped her escape. Now twenty, Brynja has never forgotten the brutal king. Or forgiven him. Under the cloak of a three-month-long Winter Dark, Brynja is returning to Tenebris for revenge.

Accompanied by a rival court, including the alluring Prince Vil, Brynja poses as diplomatic royalty to barter peace between nations. No one is better equipped to infiltrate the palace than Brynja—she remembers every hidden passage like a bad dream. But her quest to destroy Kallias is complicated by her feelings for Prince Ballast, whom she isn’t sure she can still trust. And Kallias’s own quest to mine a catastrophic weapon of war buried in the mountain’s heart will threaten them all, and force Brynja to face the darkest parts of herself.

The lives of everyone she loves depend on the choices she must make. So, too, does the fate of the world.

©2025 by Joanna Ruth Meyer. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Beautiful story

Felt the emotion behind every character and also hurt for them. Look forward to next book!

An tale of hidden agendas and secret identities

I enjoyed this audiobook very much. The story develops nicely by taking you between the present and the past with the timeline switches stated clearly at the beginning of each chapter. The main characters are fleshed out well and I appreciate how you experience Brynja's opinions of people as she feels them. So when she learns something new, so do you. There is a GREAT twist towards the end that I did not see coming. That by itself earned a whole other star from me as a reader. The world building is unique but not hard to understand or visualize. The villain is just the right level of evil without being overdone. I will definitely be checking out book two when it comes out. The narration is superb *chef's kiss*!