Melissa McShane Books

Melissa McShane has been publishing steadily since 2015 and has built one of the larger independent fantasy catalogues around, without ever having a single viral moment. Servant of the Crown launched the Crown of Tremontane series that year and remains her most widely read book. From there she branched into The Extraordinaries, beginning with Burning Bright, the Last Oracle books starting with The Book of Secrets, and Company of Strangers. She lives in Utah with her husband, four children, a niece and three cats who apparently require a lot of attention, which she mentions in her author bio and which tells you something about her general tone.

What defines her writing is competence. Her heroines are good at things, usually administrative or scholarly things, and the plots let them be good at those things on the page. This is not a small distinction. A lot of fantasy romance gives you a protagonist who is described as clever and then spends the book being rescued. McShane writes women who solve problems using the skill set they actually have, and the romance grows out of shared work rather than out of proximity and sexual tension. The result reads calmer than most of the genre. Conflict comes from politics, from institutional pressure and from people wanting incompatible things, not from misunderstandings that a single conversation would fix.

Servant of the Crown follows Alison Quinn, Countess of Waxwold, who is perfectly happy with her books until the Queen summons her to court. She meets Prince Anthony North, who has a reputation as a wastrel, and their initial mutual dislike turns into friendship and then into something else. She is later called back to serve as Royal Librarian, and a threat to the government of Tremontane puts her Library at risk and pulls her into the middle of it. It is a book about a woman who cares enormously about a collection of documents, and it makes you care about the documents too. Rider of the Crown follows, and Exile of the Crown sits between them as a shorter side story. Burning Bright, from her other main series, is Regency-era naval fantasy with fire magic, and it is the best entry point if magic systems interest you more than court intrigue.

Heat is worth being direct about. On the 0 to 5 spice scale used across this site, McShane sits at 0 to 1 across almost her entire catalogue. Doors close. Intimacy is implied and skipped over. If you arrived here after Fourth Wing and you are looking for something with the same temperature, this is not it and you will be frustrated. If you arrived here because Fourth Wing was too much and you still want a fantasy world with a real romance in it, she is close to ideal.

She matters to a romantasy audience mostly as a comfort lane. There is a large group of readers who want the long, patient version of a romance, who want a competent adult protagonist rather than a chosen teenager, and who do not want explicit content. That group is badly served by the current market and McShane has been writing directly for them for a decade. She is also a good bridge for readers moving from historical romance into fantasy, because the social machinery of her courts will feel immediately familiar.

Where to start: Servant of the Crown first, then Rider of the Crown, then keep going through Tremontane if the world holds you. If you want the same voice with a stronger magical hook, start with Burning Bright instead and treat Tremontane as your second series. Either way, expect to read a lot of books. Once she works for a reader she tends to work for them for years, and there is plenty of shelf to get through.