Review of "Order of Light" by W.D. Kilpack III

Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

Order of Light by W.D. Kilpack III is the hotly-anticipated sequel to Crown Prince! That's a tough act to follow!

Crown Prince (Book #1) was our 2025 Fiction Book of the Year. It was impactful, hard-hitting, tactful, tense, and fascinating. It really embodied everything we love about epic fantasy: action, adventure, romance, magic, mystical creatures, political intrigue, world-building, etc. And it struck that balance so well. An argument could be made that Crown Prince was the best romance novel of the year (or at least in contention). The bond between Natharr and Darshelle was so powerful and beautiful to see, elevated by their mutual desire to love and protect Nathan.

What was also fascinating about that book was the conflict involving the War of Succession, King Valane, and Brandt the Usurper/Brandt the Green. Crown Prince was a top-notch epic fantasy novel!

So, how does the sequel fare with such big shoes to fill?

Well, admirably.

Crown Prince gave us the war, the hot romance, and the birth of Nathan. Order of Light gives us the consequences--the slow-burn resistance, the cosmic lore, and a coming-of-age arc that is way more dangerous than just “kid learns to swing a sword.”

Everyone has grown and evolved at this point, showing progress, which is nice to see from a character perspective. You want to see character development, and you definitely get that here. At the same time it's natural and normal to get nostalgic for the way things used to be. Nathan, in particular, isn't a cute little guy anymore. He's grown now. And part of that hurts in a deeply human way. It's like the innocence is dead. Then again, it pretty much was by the end of the previous book.

Anyway...

We open in Snowcrest, a cold northern town under Maarihkish rule. Martice runs the Eyes of the Radiant inn, which is officially a place for food, ale, and gossip, and unofficially the cover for a surviving chapter of the Knights of Ril. These are not shiny paladins. They are tired ex-garrison soldiers and locals who once rose against Brandt’s regime, got crushed, and now pretend to be harmless while quietly recruiting and watching.

Natharr arrives there with Ellis the Elder, operating under one of his many “I am totally just some guy” personas. Of course, it does not take long for the Knights to realize he is the Guardian of Maarihk, the same living legend whose stories they grew up on. Ellis has already been nudging them from the shadows. Together, he and Natharr formalize what was just a bitter little resistance into something bigger: the Order of Light.

Under the inn, they hold chapter meetings, debate oaths, and put Natharr through an initiation to see if this mythic figure can actually live by their rules. He agrees, though he warns them that any road that runs through him also runs straight into blood and chaos. The Knights do not back down. In their minds, they have already been crushed once. If the Guardian can give them a real chance to do more than die uselessly, they are in.

And it immediately becomes apparent that this book is DENSE. It's one of those books--rich with lore and world-building.

On the other side of town, Lieutenant Tavish is the Maarihkish hammer waiting to fall. He is ambitious, ruthless, and not nearly as dumb as most fantasy garrison commanders. He notices that the same “unemployed” veterans keep drinking at Martice’s inn. He notices that some of them suddenly have money and muscle again. He notices that Martice is in the middle of everything.

His suspicion builds until it becomes inevitable. Snowcrest is going to get swept. The inn will be searched. Someone is going to burn.

Natharr and Ellis see it coming. Ellis has what is basically a cheat code: a black circle of cloth that becomes a literal trap door into his private white realm. When Tavish finally moves, sending soldiers to raid and ultimately torch the Eyes of the Radiant, the key members of the Order are already gone - dropped through the trap door into an endless white nowhere. The bodies and burned-out inn Tavish finds are a cover, not the end.

From the world’s point of view, the Snowcrest problem is solved. From the Order’s point of view, this is just the beginning.

Ellis’s white realm is one of the coolest and weirdest parts of the book. It is not heaven, not hell, just an endless white expanse where you can stand, sit, and build furniture but never see walls, horizon, or sky. There is no sun. No night. No stars. Time is more suggestion than law.

At first, the Order uses it like a safehouse. Need to move families without marching them past hostile border posts? Use the trap door. Need to stash weapons or food away from garrison eyes? White realm. But then something frightening happens: once they stay there long enough, they stop needing sleep. They do not age. They can train for hours and never really get tired.

It is a dream for warriors and a nightmare for minds. Natharr remembers what the Wise Ones said in the Ancient Wood about time being flexible. Ellis starts talking about the “Time of New Blood” instead of a neat calendar year. The men lean into it. If they cannot get out yet, they will at least become the most disciplined, well trained fighting force to ever step back into the world. Swords, spears, languages, medicine, tactics - they spend what might be months or years sharpening everything.

Ellis keeps testing new trap doors, opening routes to other worlds. Some of these tests go very wrong. There is a genuinely creepy scene in which he opens a door into an underwater nightmare full of parasitic tentacles and only escapes because Natharr and the others literally anchor him by the legs. Another test ends up in a place that feels spiritually rancid, so they cut that door too. Bit by bit, Ellis learns how not to die when poking holes in reality.

The cost is that for a long stretch, everyone is trapped in the white realm, living in invisible “houses,” training, and trying not to go insane.

We get a lot of our adventure-fix from this section of the book.

While Natharr is playing cosmic chess in Snowcrest and the white realm, Darshelle is still in the Ancient Wood raising Nathan. To outsiders, that sounds peaceful. It is not.

Nathan is no longer the baby or tiny child from Crown Prince. He is a young man now, larger, faster, and more gifted than any normal human. He has trained with his father, hunts in the forest, and spars with Great Beasts. He also has dreams that show him strange places and people he has never met, including a pale, white haired man and a red haired woman whose presence feels dangerous and magnetic.

The Ancient Wood has its own regulars: Ulla the Atomie, Talika the lion-woman, Quiet One the mud-man (who especially plays a big role in this book), and Darshelle herself trying to be mother, teacher, and emotional glue. Nathan feels trapped. In one heartbreaking moment, he admits his only friends are essentially his parents and the Beasts, because he cannot leave and cannot know anyone else. The boy who was born to be crown prince has grown up in a cage that looks like a forest.

Then Quiet One leads him into something no parent would ever call safe. He has Nathan capture a young Dragon, bleeding from a brutal wrestling match. Instead of finishing it off, they lay out a copper bowl, fire, and a clay figurine. Quiet One has Nathan slit the Dragon’s throat so its blood runs into the bowl and the flames, chanting words that feel too old and heavy for a teenager’s mouth.

The clay figurine drinks the flames, moves, breathes, changes. By the end of that scene, Nathan has performed a forbidden Rite and created Vikari (later called Bu) a red haired Dragon woman with fangs, a tail, and a very literal thirst for his blood. Bu is in this book A LOT, for better or for worse.

Bu almost kills him on the spot, driven by hunger and the magic of the ritual. Quiet One orders Nathan to stab her, to end her before she consumes him. Nathan hesitates. He sees that she is alive, afraid, and weirdly beautiful. Instead of killing her, he spares her. It nearly costs him his life.

There's a lot of family/household drama. Oh, and there's this interesting section with Korrik and the plains of Qaan, which happens to be where Darshelle is from (as we learned in the previous book). Once again, you really get the impression that the people of Qaan are very superstitious, spiritual people based on their myths, legends, and lore. To be honest, although it can be a bit much (since it makes a dense book denser), it's still pretty fascinating and commendable.

This book really struggles with two key issues:

1. Having to follow one of the best fiction books of the past year and try to stand out in its own right.

2. The fact that this book always feels like its holding back and holding out. It always feels like it's building to something without release or relief. It can make the average reader incredibly impatient. It can even be frustrating. Perhaps that's part of being the second (and middle) book in a larger series.

The fact of the matter is: this isn't the main event, the main event is still to come. It's like night one of WrestleMania. Most people don't look forward to it as much.

With that said, this is still a good fantasy book with superb, lovable characters.

Check it out on Amazon!