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A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows: What Beginners Miss and What Old Hands Miss

A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows is the first of four books in Holly Renee's Stars and Shadows series, an adult fae romantasy. Holly Renee Publishing released the original paperback on July 11, 2022 at 290 pages, and Goodreads dates the work's first publication to July 14, 2022. Sourcebooks Casablanca reissued it on June 24, 2025 as a 336-page deluxe paperback with designed edges, character illustrations, a map, and bonus scenes. The Podium Audio recording, narrated by Stella Hunter and J.F. Harding, runs 6 hours and 36 minutes. Book one ends on a cliffhanger.

I spent eighteen years mixing color in a theater scenery shop, where a flat had to read correctly from row twenty under lights nobody let me choose. That work left me with one rule I cannot switch off: never judge a finish from a wet swatch. Wet gloss lies about sheen and about depth, and it lies hardest about how the surface will behave in the room where it actually lives. I chose a gloss that way once and spent the following weekend sanding it back.

Buying a romantasy off a fifteen-second video is a wet swatch. The cover photographs beautifully, the edges are sprayed, the clip promises a shadow daddy. None of that tells you which of five editions landed in your cart, how many hours you just committed to, or whether the story stops mid-sentence.

How many books are in the Stars and Shadows series?

Four, and the series is finished. The Goodreads series record lists it as "4 primary works, 4 total works," in this order:

  1. A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows (2022)
  2. A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal (2022)
  3. A Kingdom of Venom and Vows (2023)
  4. A Kingdom of Fire and Fate (2023)

Notice book two. Half-remember "kingdom" plus "blood" a month after somebody recommended this to you and you will land on a different author's series entirely. That trap gets its own section below.

Which edition of A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows are you actually buying?

Goodreads lists 26 editions of this work. Five of them are the ones an English-language buyer will realistically hit, and their page counts do not match.

| Edition | Publisher | Released | Pages | ISBN-13 | |---|---|---|---|---| | Original ebook | Holly Renee | July 14, 2022 | 259 | — | | Indie paperback | Holly Renee Publishing | July 11, 2022 | 290 | 9781957514154 | | Deluxe paperback | Sourcebooks Casablanca | June 24, 2025 | 336 | 9781464241932 | | Standard paperback | Sourcebooks Casablanca | June 24, 2025 | 336 | 9781464252266 | | Hardcover | Sourcebooks Casablanca | June 24, 2025 | — | 9781464249839 |

Porter Square Books, Third Place Books, and Barnes & Noble all list the deluxe paperback at $18.99. Penguin Books Australia, which handles the Sourcebooks edition for that market, lists the standard paperback at the same 336 pages as the deluxe.

Then there is the Gold Foil Edition, sold direct from Holly Renee's own store at $25.00 against $20.00 for her standard paperbacks. The store describes the difference as gold foil detailing. She also sells a signing-exclusive omnibus of all four books, hardback, at $50.00, with black pages, metallic black edges, and a gold foiled cover.

Three of those descriptions are finish specifications, and finishes are the one thing I am qualified to be opinionated about. A stenciled or sprayed edge is a coating applied to the closed text block, and it lives on the fore-edge, exactly where thumbs land. Hot-stamped foil on a paperback cover behaves like any high-gloss surface: it shows every fingerprint, and it scuffs where the book rubs a bag. Black pages with metallic edges photograph magnificently and hold skin oil visibly. If you shelve books upright in a room with a window on one wall, that raking light will pick out edge wear on a sprayed block within a year. I own sprayed-edge books I love. I would rather you know what you are paying for before it arrives.

Cover art will not tell you which edition a listing is offering. The ISBN will:

  1. Open the listing's product details and find the ISBN-13.
  2. Match it against the table above. 9781957514154 is the 2022 indie paperback at 290 pages; 9781464241932 is the 2025 deluxe; 9781464252266 is the 2025 standard paperback; 9781464249839 is the hardcover.
  3. Add A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal to the same order. You will want it within the hour.

Did the 2025 reissue change the book?

The object changed. Whether the prose changed is a question I cannot answer from retail metadata, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

What is documented: the retail listings from Porter Square Books and Third Place Books attribute the deluxe contents to designed edges, character illustrations, a map, and bonus scenes. The count moved from 290 pages in the 2022 indie paperback to 336 in the Sourcebooks editions. Part of that is trim size and typesetting, part is the added material.

Here is the detail I find genuinely odd, and I would love someone to correct me. Goodreads and Penguin Books Australia both list the standard Sourcebooks paperback at 336 pages, identical to the deluxe. If that metadata is accurate, the deluxe premium is buying the edge treatment and the illustrations rather than additional text. I have not seen a publisher statement confirming that reading, so treat it as an inference from two listings rather than a fact.

Sourcebooks Casablanca reissued the whole quartet across twenty months, in deluxe form:

The book four date and its 288-page hardcover come from Raincoast Books' distribution catalogue, which files the series under the BISAC heading FICTION / Romance / Fantasy.

How long is the A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows audiobook?

Six hours and thirty-six minutes, narrated as a duet by Stella Hunter and J.F. Harding. Podium Audio published it on April 4, 2023 under ISBN 9781039427822.

Podium's own catalogue page says 6 hours, 37 minutes. Apple Books lists 6 hours, 36 minutes, and the Audible listing agrees with Apple. That one-minute gap is a rounding artifact between a master file spec and a retail listing. I mention it only because someone will otherwise assume they downloaded an abridgement. Podium lists book two, A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal, at 6 hours 36 minutes, released June 6, 2023.

Six and a half hours is short for this category. A commute and one long Sunday afternoon covers it. Anyone budgeting a week for book one is going to be surprised, and anyone assuming a series this size will last a holiday is going to be surprised in the other direction.

Is A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows young adult or adult?

Adult. Penguin Books Australia classifies the audience for the Sourcebooks Casablanca paperback as "Adult." Raincoast Books' catalogue entry carries the BISAC subject heading FICTION / Romance / Fantasy, which is the adult fiction category rather than a juvenile one. Sourcebooks Casablanca is an adult romance imprint.

Reader-side data agrees and goes further. StoryGraph readers file graphic content warnings for the book including sexual content, sexual violence, physical and emotional abuse, and a toxic relationship, with additional moderate flags covering gore, trafficking, and kidnapping. Goodreads' shelf tags include "Spicy" alongside Fantasy, Romantasy, Fae, and Vampires.

Crowdsourced tag systems muddy this. Romance.io's reader-supplied tags for the title include both "new adult" and "young adult," which is how a fourteen-year-old ends up with it. The publisher classification is the one to trust, and the publisher says adult.

Stars and Shadows vs. Kingdom of Shadows vs. Empire of Blood

The People Also Ask box around this title is not full of generic fae recommendations. It is full of people trying to work out which of three similarly-named series they were told about. Here is the disambiguation.

| | Stars and Shadows | Kingdom of Shadows | Empire of Blood | |---|---|---|---| | Book 1 | A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows | Crown of Light and Ashes | We Who Will Die | | Author | Holly Renee | Vi Carter & Joanna Maz | Stacia Stark | | First published | July 14, 2022 | June 25, 2025 | December 30, 2025 | | Book 1 length | 259 pages (ebook) | 374 pages | 423 pages | | Goodreads rating | 3.73 from 61,506 ratings | 3.91 from 4,528 ratings | 4.07 from 94,925 ratings | | Series status | 4 books, complete | 3 books, complete | Book 2 expected 2027 | | Central creature | Fae | Shadow court fae | Vampires, Rome-inspired |

Ratings and counts above are the Goodreads figures as of September 2026.

The Kingdom of Shadows trap is structural: no book in that trilogy is called Kingdom of Shadows. All three are titled "Crown of" something. The credit line shifts by retailer too, which makes searching worse. Goodreads files book one under M.F. Grace, the Amazon paperback credits Maya Basol, Joanna Maz, and Vi Carter, and BookBub and Fantastic Fiction credit Vi Carter and Joanna Maz.

Empire of Blood is a different animal entirely. Stacia Stark's We Who Will Die is a vampire romantasy in a reimagined ancient Rome, published December 30, 2025 by Avon and Harper Voyager at 423 pages in hardcover, and its Goodreads listing marks it an instant New York Times bestseller. There is also Meg Cowley's Empire of Blood and Malice, whose first book is titled Heart of Shadows, which is close to a worst-case naming collision with both of the above.

My preference, stated plainly so you can discount it: if you want a complete series and the smallest entry cost, Stars and Shadows is the one, and book one asks 6 hours 36 minutes of you before you know whether to continue. If you want the biggest single book and the strongest reception, We Who Will Die is 423 pages at a 4.07 average, though you will be waiting until 2027 for the sequel.

What beginners miss, and what old hands miss

If this is your first Stars and Shadows book

It ends on a cliffhanger, and Goodreads and StoryGraph reviews are full of readers saying so with feeling. Buy book two first. The 3.73 average across 61,506 ratings is not a lukewarm consensus so much as a genuinely split room, and reading a dozen one-star and a dozen five-star reviews will tell you more than the number does. It is adult, with graphic content. It is also short, which is the pleasant surprise: 259 pages, or one afternoon on audio.

If you have already read the series

The 2025 reissue is a different object from the copy on your shelf. If you own the 290-page indie paperback, you do not have the bonus scenes, the character illustrations, or the map. The reissue calendar ran June 2025 through March 2026, so a complete matching deluxe set has only been buyable since book four landed in March.

The finishes deserve a raking-light look before you commit. Sprayed edges, gold foil, and metallic black edges are coatings, and coatings wear at contact points. That is not an argument against buying them. It is an argument for handling one in a shop, tilting it toward a window, and seeing how it takes light before you order four.

And if a friend tells you they loved "the one with the shadows and the kingdom," ask for the author's name before you buy anything. Three different series answer to that description, and only one of them is Holly Renee's.

Frequently asked questions

How many books are in the Stars and Shadows series?

Four, and the series is complete. In order: A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows (2022), A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal (2022), A Kingdom of Venom and Vows (2023), and A Kingdom of Fire and Fate (2023). Goodreads lists the series as four primary works with no novellas or companion titles.

Does A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows end on a cliffhanger?

Yes. Book one stops mid-situation and resolves nothing, which is the most consistent complaint across Goodreads and StoryGraph reviews. Buy A Kingdom of Blood and Betrayal at the same time. The whole quartet was published between 2022 and 2023, so no waiting is involved once you start.

What is the difference between the deluxe edition and the regular paperback?

The deluxe paperback, ISBN 9781464241932, adds designed edges, character illustrations, a map, and bonus scenes, and retails at $18.99. Goodreads and Penguin Books Australia list both the deluxe and the standard Sourcebooks paperback at 336 pages, so the premium appears to buy production features rather than extra text.

How long is the A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows audiobook?

Six hours and thirty-six minutes, the figure Apple Books and the major retail listings show. Podium Audio's own catalogue page lists 6 hours and 37 minutes, a one-minute rounding difference. Stella Hunter and J.F. Harding narrate it as a duet, and Podium Audio released it on April 4, 2023.

Is A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows suitable for teenagers?

No. Penguin Books Australia classifies the audience as Adult, and Sourcebooks Casablanca is an adult romance imprint. StoryGraph readers file graphic content warnings including sexual content, sexual violence, and physical and emotional abuse. Some crowdsourced tag lists mislabel it young adult; the publisher classification is the accurate one.

Is A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows the same as Kingdom of Shadows?

No. Kingdom of Shadows is a separate trilogy by Vi Carter and Joanna Maz, beginning with Crown of Light and Ashes, published June 25, 2025. None of its books carry "Kingdom of Shadows" as a title, which is why searches collide. Holly Renee wrote A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows in 2022.

What is the A Kingdom of Stars and Shadows gold foil edition?

A special paperback sold directly through Holly Renee's own store at $25.00, against $20.00 for her standard paperbacks. The store describes the difference as gold foil detailing on the cover. It is separate from the Sourcebooks Casablanca deluxe paperback, which has designed edges and illustrations instead.

K. E. Robert
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