Order History
Premium Membership & Rewards
Help Center / FAQ
A Puzzle Quest: A Guest Post by Sara Sehdev and Gareth Moore
A unique interactive romantasy story in which puzzles are part of the adventure! Read on for an exclusive essay from authors Sara Sehdev and Gareth Moore on writing Queen of Swords.
Ships in 1-2 days.
Penryn and her village are preparing to celebrate the equinox on the Night of the Stars … but that night she dreams of the fae Rafrael, and later catches a glimpse of him in his realm across the river that no human can cross. He recognizes her necklace, a gift from her late mother, and soon they are off on an epic journey of love, intrigue, magic, and mayhem, with 30 fantastical illustrated puzzles to solve along the way, involving code-breaking, logic, and creative thinking. Solutions are integrated into the story, with more detailed explanations in the back of the book.
Sara Sehdev:
I have always been a dedicated romance reader, so the progression to romantasy was a very natural one for me, especially with authors like Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros really leading the way. The idea of a puzzle quest, which integrated logic and word puzzles with a story, seemed like such a clever way of adding a new dimension to the way of communicating in this genre. Gareth has such an extensive body of work: I was able to express what I wanted each solve to achieve, and he would simply create a tailored idea each time.
Gareth Moore:
Working with Sara on Queen of Swords was a dream. She had such a strong vision for the book that I really didn’t have to do much – she gave me all of the puzzle set-ups and situations when she delivered the first draft of the manuscript, so all I had to do was create a set of puzzles that matched what she had already imagined. What I especially loved about her ideas was that all of the puzzles help drive the story forward: they don’t take you out of the moment, but rather propel you onward further into the narrative, which is really clever. It’s a special skill to stitch together the two disparate elements of narrative and puzzle, but thanks to Sara’s careful planning we were able to make it work really organically throughout the book. And then, when designing the puzzles, I made sure that while they would make you pause and think they never became so tricky that you would be likely to get stuck at any point. This really helps pull you into the narrative, although as I say I have Sara to thank for making it work so well.