RITE OF KINGS is the first book in an adult Romantasy series for readers who grew up loving animated princesses but wish they had some teeth. It’s Mulan meets Brave—a princess disguised as a man competing for her own hand against a kingdom-ending foe—set in a nocturnal desert nation with a rivals-to-lovers romance for adults. Recommended for readers who like accessible language in their fantasy worlds, deities who meddle with mortals, and main characters who are strong because they are women not in spite of it.
Meghan Spelbrink writes stories for millennial women learning how to unapologetically love what they love: magic, romance, and MCs whose feminine power is their greatest weapon.
She was raised in Missouri on a steady diet of fairytales, mythology, old school Star Wars novels, and making up stories for her brother’s Lego battles. Her love of fantasy must be genetic because her parents named her after a Terry Brooks character (her real name!), and she named her son after a Sarah J. Maas hero.
She now lives in California, is a stay-at-home mom to a feisty four-year-old, wife to a wonderfully nerdy virologist, and a dog-mom to two ornery rescues. She is an award-winning writer (The Emily Award), President of the Bay Area Romance Writers, and holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University.
Welcome to The Villains Club!
Here, chaos is mandatory, caffeine is non-negotiable, and every meeting starts with a complaint about heroes who get in the way.
Inside this delightfully devious anthology, villains finally get their own POV. That means no oversight, no interruptions, just pure, unfiltered rebellion.
On the surface, these villains may seem like ordinary scoundrels, delinquents, bandits, and baddies. Scratch the surface (preferably with a dagger-shaped, impeccably manicured pinky nail), and you’ll find all the complexities, contradictions, impossible choices, and longing for connection that make even villains human. You’ll get to know misunderstood monsters, overworked overlords, demons with major Inhuman Resources issues, and even a few villains who might actually be heroes (but we didn’t have the heart to tell them).
There are no tidy lessons or shiny trophies here. Sometimes we’re the hero, sometimes the villain.
And sometimes, it just feels good to be bad.
So grab a chair, pour something bubbly, and settle in.
RITE OF KINGS - Tropes!
💖 Adult Romantasy
👩❤️👨 Dual POV
🖤 Rivals to lovers
🫂 Found family
🏠 Forced proximity
📖 Buried history
🤬 Feminine rage
👑 Royalty in disguise
🔥 Touch her and die
🦅 Side characters with MC energy
🐦🔥 Mythology
✨ Lost magic
☠️ A deadly competition
🏜️ Non-Euro-style setting
🌶️🌶️ Fade to Black
💍 HEA
RITE OF KINGS - Comp Titles
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin series (Roseanne A. Brown)
📚 Desert setting, trials for a consort, and demon antagonist
We Hunt the Flame series (Hafsah Faizal)
📚 Woman in man's world, male disguise, rewritten history
The Crucible series (Abigail Owen)
📚 Lies, trials, gods at work, non-"chosen one" hero
The Eye of the Goddess series (Sariah Wilson)
📚 Trials, feminine rage, hidden royalty, gods at work
Damsel (Netflix 2024)
📚 Feminine rage, trope-flipping, rewritten history
"The Man" by Taylor Swift... actually MOST of her ragey songs
"Sit Still, Look Pretty" by Daya
"Speechless" by Naomi Scott
📚 FMC's mindset and attitude
It doesn't have a mood board or title yet, but this story is like Criminal Minds but Romantic Urban Fantasy with a Guardians of the Galaxy-esque magical crime fighting gang and some enemies to lovers goodness. More to come!
