‘Rebel Witch’ release date, confirmed
Fans of the hit YA romantasy novel The Heartless Hunter (The Crimson Moth in the U.K.) will be pleased to know that the next sequel has a confirmed release date. We’ve got all the big news on Rebel Witch for you in one place.
Spoilers for The Heartless Hunter (The Crimson Moth: Book One)
Written by Kristen Ciccarelli, The Crimson Moth fantasy duology is an exciting entry in the YAlit canon that presents a unique twist on the tried and true witchcraft & wizardry formula. In this world, witches are outcasts persecuted by a relentless government institution that seeks to wipe out their race systemically. In today’s political climate, the themes are fairly topical.
As announced by Macmillan Publishers, the official release date for The Crimson Moth: Book Two, Rebel Witch, is February 18, 2025. You’ll be able to purchase the book in various brick-and-mortar stores like Barnes & Noble and online retailers like Amazon, Target, Bookshop.org, and Books-a-Million. It’s available for pre-order now.
Like the first book, Rebel Witch centers around a few familiar main characters, like the young pretend socialite witch Rune Winters, and the scrappy and formidable Gideon Sharpe, head of the witch-hunting force the Blood Guard. Enemies-to-lovers fans, this one’s for you.
Many characters across The Crimson Moth duology are more complex than they initially let on. Sharpe seems ruthlessly bloodthirsty, but he’s fairly traumatized from the heartache that the evil witch Cressida Roseblood left him with. He’s definitely on the wrong side of history in many ways, but he also comes with a lot of inner conflict, especially since he has romantic feelings for Winters, a witch he’s sworn to kill.
Rune Winters is a bundle of contradictions herself. On the one hand, she is bound by blood into an ancient family of witches that grant her power, but on the other, she feels immense guilt from the heartfelt sacrifice her grandmother made to save her life. Emotionally torn by this, she decides to put that pain into forging the infamous Crimson Moth alter ego, a vigilante who risks life and death to save witches from New Republic executions.
The sequel, Rebel Witch, will push and pull many of these tensions and backstories even further, especially where one particular major character reveal at the end of the first novel is concerned. Rune being betrayed by Gideon is also a major blow that not only sends her into emotional turmoil but also makes her life substantially more dangerous now that her true identity has been exposed.
Keep an eye out for Rebel Witch when it drops in bookstores on February 18, 2025.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
