Owl King by Bex Hogan
A Review by Melanie Marttila
Owl King by Bex Hogan is the second in her YA fantasy Faery Realms series. You don’t have to have read the first book, Nettle, to enjoy Owl King. While it’s set in the same world and Nettle and Ellion are secondary characters, Owl King stands on its own. After reading Owl King, though, you may find yourself craving more of Hogan’s vision of the faery realms.
Lyla is devoted to her half-faery sister Ilsette whom their mother abandoned as an infant because she was half human. They live in the faery realm of Never Moon, under the pall of cruel Cato, the eponymous king.
King Cato has commanded that every faery in the realm attend the Centennial Feathered Ball and neither Lyla nor Ilsette can refuse. Their intent is to remain unnoticed in the crowd, but Ilsette, whose voice is the sweetest in the realm, is heard singing and the sisters are separated when the king demands a performance.
Though the faeries in attendance applaud her, Cato sees through Ilsette’s disguise and ejects her from the ball because she is tainted by her human half. Ilsette evades her guards and finds her way back to Lyla, but Cato has been captured by Lyla’s beauty and announces that they will marry.
Ilsette is horrified. Everyone knows what happens to the faeries Cato takes to wife.
It all started with a covenant between the rulers of the faery realms. Each had to sacrifice a token of their power to ensure none of them would seek to conquer the others. Cato’s token was a feather, but along with that feather, he lost his magic and now he plucks the feathers of his wives to restore his magic, leaving them, not dead, but irrevocably drained.
And so timid Ilsette embarks on a dangerous quest to recover Cato’s feather before Lyla joins the ranks of Cato’s past wives.
Meanwhile, Lyla seeks to delay the plucking of each feather by telling Cato stories.
With elements of Bluebeard and The One Thousand and One Nights, Owl King is a dark but touching tale about the bonds of family, born and found. This novel is tragic but leaves readers with the hope of new beginnings.
About the Author
Raised on a healthy diet of fantasy and fairy tales, BEX HOGAN spends hours lost in daydreams. Writing her stories down was a natural progression and she enjoys sharing her time between the real world and escaping to her imagination. A Cornish girl at heart, Bex lives in Cambridgeshire with her family. She is the author of the Isles of Storm and Sorrow trilogy, Black Heat and Nettle.
About the Reviewer
Melanie Marttila (she/her) is an #ActuallyAutistic SFF author-in-progress, writing poetry and tales of hope in the face of adversity. Her poetry has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, Polar Starlight, Sulphur, and her debut poetry collection, The Art of Floating, was published in 2024 by Latitude 46. Her short fiction has appeared in SuperCanucks, Through the Portal, and Pulp Literature. She is a settler writing in Sudbury, or ‘N’Swakamok, on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, home of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and the Wahnapitae First Nation, in the house where three generations of her family have lived, on the street that bears her surname, with her spouse and their dog.
Book Details
Publisher : Tundra Books
Publication date : May 5 2026
Print length : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 1774888785
ISBN-13 : 978-1774888780
Reading age : 12 years and up
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