Power was never the danger. Want was.
On Samhain night, with treachery seated beside the throne and the dead stirring beneath the House of Faces, Macha felt him at her back—steady, lethal, far too close. She was meant to hold Ulaid together, not crave the man sworn to protect her. But desire turned every choice into something dangerous.
Ruairi had already crossed death once. Macha was far more dangerous.
Macha stood before him with fire in her eyes while Ulaid cracked apart around her, and every vow he’d sworn strained toward breaking. He was her blade, her shield, the last thing standing between her and the darkness rising through the court. He was never meant to want her like this.
The dead had always spoken to Breda. She never expected them to speak his name.
As the House of Faces began to fracture, the whispers pulled her toward truths long buried within Ulaid—and toward a shadowed man who felt more like a warning than salvation. The dead were no longer content to whisper.
Cian lived with the damage he helped create—and the woman he could not save.
Old magic bound him to grief, guilt, and a past that refused to stay buried. Love had failed them before. It might fail them again.
As Samhain descends, loyalties fracture, the dead grow restless, and Ulaid begins to unravel.
I picked this up expecting Celtic mythology, ancient magic, political intrigue, and perhaps the occasional battle.
Which, to be fair, is exactly what I got.
What I was not expecting was to become so invested in Macha and Ruairi that I spent large sections of the book completely ignoring the plot in favour of wondering when they were finally going to stop looking at each other and do something about it.
The plot is excellent, by the way.
Every time Macha and Ruairi appeared together, my attention span mysteriously wandered off.
Macha arrives in Ulaid and is immediately greeted by a druid beheading someone. At that point, I decided I didn't like him and spent the rest of the book waiting for him to prove me right.
Meanwhile, ancient magic is stirring, dark forces are moving behind the scenes, prophecies are doing what prophecies do best, and nobody appears willing to answer a straightforward question.
As for Ruairi...
Well.
Let's just say that if a brooding warrior with a tragic past, unwavering loyalty, and the patience of a saint is your thing, you may find yourself becoming slightly distracted.
The romance is all longing, tension, meaningful glances, and emotional restraint, which turns out to be remarkably effective. By the time things started heating up, I was paying considerably less attention to the mythology than I probably should have been.
Not that the mythology wasn't fascinating.
It was.
I was simply... multitasking, if you know what I mean - No, not that, I was trying to bake a cake!!!
By the end, I was thoroughly invested in the story, completely attached to the characters, and I did not at all forget about the cake until the smoke alarm went off!
Pick up your copy of Tides of Treachery HERE.
Hanna Park
I began my writing career in the pre-dawn of a winter morning while my husband snored like a train. We could call my husband the catalyst. If it weren’t for him, I would never have gone to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, feed the cat, and sit on the loveseat in front of the fire. It was there, in those moments of wondrous quiet, that I did something I had never thought possible. I opened my laptop, and while the coffee went cold, I wrote a story. My husband had no idea that these sojourns to the loveseat in front of the fire would become a daily occurrence, that writing would become an obsession, but the cat knew. She knows everything.
I write stories that make you laugh, make you cry, and make you love. Thank you, friends, for reading!
In the beginning, there was an empty page.
I am a writer who lives in Muskoka, Canada, with a husband who snores, a hungry cat, and an almost perfect canine––he’s an adorable little shit.
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