Carissa Broadbent is one of the great self-publishing success stories of modern romantasy. She spent years writing in obscurity, released her War of Lost Hearts trilogy starting with Daughter of No Worlds in 2020, and built a small but devoted readership. Then in 2022 she published The Serpent and the Wings of Night, a vampire fantasy about a human girl competing in a deadly tournament, and BookTok did what BookTok does. The book exploded, Tor's romantasy imprint Bramble picked up the series for traditional publication, and Broadbent went from indie author to genre headliner in about eighteen months.
What sets her apart is structure. The Crowns of Nyaxia series is planned as three duologies, each following a different vampire house in the world of Obitraes: the Nightborn Duet for the House of Night, the Shadowborn Duet for the House of Shadow, and the Bloodborn Duet for the House of Blood. That architecture means every two books you get a complete love story with a real ending, while the larger mythology of the goddess Nyaxia keeps building underneath. It is a smarter way to run a long series than the endless-cliffhanger model, and other authors have started copying it.
The books themselves earn the hype. The Serpent and the Wings of Night follows Oraya, adopted human daughter of the vampire king Vincent, as she enters the Kejari, a legendary tournament held in Nyaxia's honor where the prize is a wish and the entry fee is usually your life. Her uneasy alliance with Raihn, a vampire rival with his own secrets, is enemies-to-lovers done with actual patience. The sequel, The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King, deals with the fallout in a way that refuses easy answers. The Songbird and the Heart of Stone (2024) shifts to Mische, the sunniest character from the first duet, and drags her literally into the underworld alongside Asar, the House of Shadow's grumpy necromancer prince. The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk closed that duet in 2025, and The Lion and the Deathless Dark opens the final Bloodborn Duet in 2026. The novella Six Scorched Roses, about a scholar trading blood for answers, is a small gem worth your time between books.
Spice-wise, Broadbent sits around a 3 on our 0-5 scale. The romances burn slowly, the scenes are explicit when they arrive, but they are rationed. A book might give you one or two, and they land harder for it. If you want heat on every third page, look elsewhere. If you want tension you can feel in your teeth, this is your author.
For romantasy readers, Broadbent matters because she solved the genre's biggest problem: books that are all vibes and no plot. Her tournaments have rules, her gods have agendas, her magic costs something, and her wars kill characters you love. She writes grief unusually well for a genre that often rushes past it. Oraya's relationship with Vincent, her monstrous and genuinely loving father, is one of the best parent-child dynamics in fantasy, full stop. Readers who came for the romance stay for the ache.
Start with The Serpent and the Wings of Night, no exceptions. Read the Nightborn Duet in order, slot in Six Scorched Roses whenever you need a palate cleanser, then move to The Songbird and the Heart of Stone and The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk. Each duet stands mostly on its own, but the payoffs compound if you read in publication order. If you finish everything and want more of her voice, the earlier War of Lost Hearts trilogy is rougher but shows the same instincts: hard choices, slow trust, and love that has to survive politics.
