If you loved how Lark’s unspoken words could command and heal—and how King Tiras needed her uncanny gift to hold back the Volgar—then Uprooted will feel like coming home. Agnieszka’s magic is wild, more sung than studied, and her uneasy alliance with the prickly wizard called the Dragon echoes that charged, reluctant partnership you enjoyed between Lark and Tiras. As a corrupted Wood presses the borders the way the Volgar menaced Jeru, the story leans into visceral, lyrical spellwork, court tensions, and a romance that grows through mutual reliance and respect.

Did the poetic cadence of Lark’s "Tellings," the fairy-tale hush around her mother’s binding, and the almost fable-like feel of The Bird and the Sword sweep you away? Strange the Dreamer amplifies that mood. Taylor’s language is sumptuous and musical, wrapping a tale of a lost city and a blue-skinned girl in the same kind of luminous, bittersweet wonder that surrounded Lark and Tiras’s court—equal parts romance, mystery, and the ache of forgotten magic.

If you were drawn to Lark and King Tiras’s evolution from forced proximity to fierce devotion—sharing secrets, protecting each other through palace dangers—Radiance delivers that same emotional heartbeat. A human noblewoman and a Kai prince enter a political marriage much like Lark’s uneasy place in Tiras’s court. What begins as awkwardness transforms into warmth, humor, and steadfast love, with courtly expectations and cultural rifts standing in for the Volgar and Jeru’s laws as the obstacles their bond must weather.

Lark’s journey—from silenced, hidden "Gifted" to a woman who chooses how and when to use her words—mirrors Katsa’s hard-won growth in Graceling. Like Lark escaping her father’s control and learning the cost of using her power to help Tiras against the Volgar, Katsa questions the brutal role she was forced into and painstakingly forges a new path for her abilities, her voice, and her heart. It’s that satisfying arc of self-mastery and moral choice you admired in Jeru, transposed to another vivid fantasy realm.

If what hooked you was the close, character-first focus—the quiet rooms in Tiras’s palace, the private negotiations, the banter and trust that bloom between Lark and Tiras—Swordheart hits that same sweet spot. Halla and Sarkis spend much of the tale in close quarters, their rapport and vulnerability taking center stage while the wider world stays tastefully at the edges. The magic (a sword-bound warrior!) adds spice rather than swallowing the tender, witty connection that drives the story forward.