Ashley Shuttleworth Books

Ashley Shuttleworth holds a BA in English Literature with a minor in Classical History, spent time teaching in Seoul, and now writes in Ontario, Canada, in the company of a cat named Zack and a cosplay sword collection that keeps growing. That combination of classical training and unapologetic geek enthusiasm is a fair description of their fiction too, which pulls Greek and Celtic mythology into a contemporary Canadian setting and treats both halves with equal seriousness.

The Hollow Star Saga is their major work. A Dark and Hollow Star arrived in February 2021 from Margaret K. McElderry Books, pitched as The Cruel Prince meets City of Bones, and set in a hidden faerie Toronto where a series of murders threatens to expose the magical world to humans. The cast is queer across the board, four point-of-view characters carrying different stakes, and the mystery structure gives the book a forward drive that a lot of urban fantasy lacks. The series continues with A Cruel and Fated Light and A Grim and Sunken Vow, and it is a trilogy with a completed arc, which is worth saying plainly in a genre where announced series are often abandoned.

The four leads are the reason the books work. Arlo is half-fae and considered magically deficient by a court that measures worth in power, Nausicaa is a former Fury stripped of her position and extremely bad at humility, and the other two perspectives carry the investigation and the personal cost of it. Shuttleworth writes the Greek mythological material seriously rather than as a wink, so the immortals feel genuinely old and genuinely bored, which is a hard note to hit.

What defines Shuttleworth's writing is density and enthusiasm. The books are long, the mythology is layered, and the author clearly enjoys the lore, sometimes at the expense of pace. Readers who want a lean thriller will find the first hundred pages slow. Readers who want a properly built fae world with courts, hierarchies, ironborn politics, and consequences that carry across three books will find the investment repaid. The Toronto setting is used rather than decorative, which is refreshing in a subgenre that defaults to New York or London.

On heat, this is young adult and sits at 0 to 1 on our spice scale. The romances are present, queer, and emotionally weighted, but physical content is minimal. Content warnings are the more relevant note here: the series deals with murder, self-harm, addiction as a plot element through a magical drug, and grief, and it does not treat any of them lightly. The book is darker in subject matter than it is in spice, which is a combination readers sometimes misjudge.

For a romantasy audience, Shuttleworth is a strong recommendation for anyone who wants faerie politics without adult content, and one of the better options for readers specifically seeking queer leads in a mainstream young adult fantasy series. The comparison to The Cruel Prince is fair on atmosphere and unfair on structure, since Shuttleworth is writing a murder mystery with romance threaded through rather than a court intrigue with a central pairing. Readers who liked the urban-hidden-world side of the genre more than the secondary-world side will do well here. The fae romance collection covers the neighbouring shelf.

Where to start: A Dark and Hollow Star, then A Cruel and Fated Light, then A Grim and Sunken Vow. Read in order without exception, because the mystery threads and the four-perspective structure make dipping in mid-series close to useless. Give the first book at least two hundred pages before deciding, since the setup is front-loaded and the payoff is not. If you are unsure whether the young adult register suits you, the reading quiz will point you toward the right heat band first.