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Time of Iron #2
All Hail Chaos
Not yet published
Expected 12 May 26THE EMPEROR IS HERE. AND SHE MADE HIM WORSE.
Rae is a fantasy reader who's been transported to her favourite fictional world of swords and sorcery, castles and monsters. Playing the villainess, she thought she could change the narrative, but this version of the plot is far much more deadly than the one she knew.
Her friends are on the run: the Cobra shelters in an eerie manor haunted by dark secrets, while Emer and Lia stoke a revolution in the gutters. Undead armies roam the kingdom, raiders camp at the city gates, and the irresistible emperor - Rae's favourite character ever, now possibly the greatest monster in the land - wants her to be his evil queen.
What's a villainess to do? It's time for wicked bargains and fake engagements, in a fantasy where the most dangerous thing you can do is believe in someone.
All Hail Chaos is Sarah Rees Brennan's wicked, unmissable sequel to the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling Long Live Evil ('delicious, subversive' Leigh Bardugo).
Rae is a fantasy reader who's been transported to her favourite fictional world of swords and sorcery, castles and monsters. Playing the villainess, she thought she could change the narrative, but this version of the plot is far much more deadly than the one she knew.
Her friends are on the run: the Cobra shelters in an eerie manor haunted by dark secrets, while Emer and Lia stoke a revolution in the gutters. Undead armies roam the kingdom, raiders camp at the city gates, and the irresistible emperor - Rae's favourite character ever, now possibly the greatest monster in the land - wants her to be his evil queen.
What's a villainess to do? It's time for wicked bargains and fake engagements, in a fantasy where the most dangerous thing you can do is believe in someone.
All Hail Chaos is Sarah Rees Brennan's wicked, unmissable sequel to the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling Long Live Evil ('delicious, subversive' Leigh Bardugo).
Kindle Edition
Expected publication May 12, 2026
13 people are currently reading
7773 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Rees Brennan
71 books6,038 followersSarah Rees Brennan is Irish and currently lives in Dublin. She's been writing YA books for more than ten years, which is terrifying to contemplate! She hopes you (yes you!) find at least one of them to be the kind of book you remember.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
Want to read
June 17, 2025I told the author on instagram that her book made me cry and SHE LAUGHED
Want to read
October 31, 2024me checking everyday for this sequel release date has paid off. Cannot wait WOOP
Want to read
October 29, 2025October 28, 2025
FYI, release is now showing May 12, 2026 on retail sites…
Sept 9, 2025
Release date got pushed back to April 2026 😵
May 22, 2025
Not all of us waiting for September to come just to see the release date get pushed back to Feb 2026 😭
But hoping Sarah's surgery goes well and she makes a full recovery!
FYI, release is now showing May 12, 2026 on retail sites…
Sept 9, 2025
Release date got pushed back to April 2026 😵
May 22, 2025
Not all of us waiting for September to come just to see the release date get pushed back to Feb 2026 😭
But hoping Sarah's surgery goes well and she makes a full recovery!
Want to read
November 21, 2025key can kneel at my altar any day
Want to read
March 21, 2025Gimme this book, I need to know what next for my wicked boy (it's Key, okey, he's my wicked, murderous boyfriend and I will fight everyone for him) 😭😭
Want to read
October 31, 2024I AM READY. SEPTEMBER CAN'T COME SOON ENOUGH!!
Want to read
August 14, 2025i legit can’t stop staring at the cover and i NEED this NOWWWW
Want to read
January 1, 2025I crave this. Give me fresh villainy. Give me more sly references to Shakespeare, Taylor Swift and memes.
Want to read
December 29, 2025I sort of love this cover.
Want to read
December 10, 2024WAHHHH I'm waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Want to read
January 7, 2026My motivation to survive until September 2025 tbh
upd: now it’s February 2026?? Girl, I’m already tired of surviving
upd2: well, now the book comes out in May 2026, and I’m not sure I can keep holding up, but that’s fine, no rush
upd: now it’s February 2026?? Girl, I’m already tired of surviving
upd2: well, now the book comes out in May 2026, and I’m not sure I can keep holding up, but that’s fine, no rush
Currently reading
January 15, 2026that man is in leopard print armor you cannot change my mind.
February 5, 2026
Huge thanks to Orbit for the advance reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review!
If Long Live Evil (which I loved with my whole heart) was a campy, sparkling piece of costume jewelry, All Hail Chaos is a darkly glimmering black diamond. This picks up right where LLE left off, and Rae (and the reader) is deeply unsure how darling murderous puppy Key feels about her after she feigned nonchalance during his murder to save herself. This uncertainty — and the knowledge that her misunderstanding of the original novel led to this predicament — mean that Rae is on edge throughout the book, constantly trying to figure Key out and stay one step ahead of everyone else, and she can't exuberantly play with the story the way she did in LLE.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Rae’s metafictional awareness: heroines have demurely sized breasts, fake engagements lead to falling in love for real, readers will forgive all sorts of villainous deeds if committed by someone attractive. Sarah Rees Brennan is also clearly marvelously well-read, and sprinkles paraphrases of famous lines from classic literature — from Kerouac to Tennyson to Marvell — throughout the story. You’d have to have been an English major to catch all the references, but they (and Rae’s gimlet awareness of romantasy tropes) are delightful Easter eggs.
Our intrepid cast of secondary characters spend most of the novel away from all but their love interests: Emer and Lia are hiding in the Cauldron, the Golden Cobra and Lord Marius are off to the Valerius estate to save Marius' little sister, and Rae of course is at the Palace on the Edge with Key. The Cobra and Rae exchange letters, though, as they piece together how the original story has changed and figure out what does and does not work to as they try to fix it.
The romance that had me kicking my feet the most (to my surprise!) was Eric / Marius. We got just a hint at the end of LLE that Marius might have caught feelings, and those feelings have put down deep roots at this point. He doesn't yet seem to have admitted his feelings to himself, however, despite Eric doing his best to nudge him in that direction.
Lia… Lia I have thoughts about! Really intrigued to see where her character goes in Book 3.
Speaking of book 3… Sarah Rees Brennan has once again ended the book on a MASSIVE CLIFFHANGER (immediately following a pretty big unexpected reveal), and I am simply beside myself at how long I'll have to wait for it 😭
***
“Book boyfriends: you get older, they stay the same age. It gets awkward.”
“some readers defined “morally grey” as “a remorseless murderer who is good-looking”.
“It’s nice in a way, how books change. If the magic and illumination isn’t in the story any more, the magic and illumination was always in you. The story caught a reflection of you at the right time.”
“Treating everybody in the world as if they mattered would be disastrous for the economy.”
“Despite the horrors, people fell back into living their lives in the same old way. They wanted to talk about change but remain comfortable. Surely a true king or a just god would come soon, but tomorrow, not today. The enemy might be at the gates, but they surely wouldn’t get inside. No matter who sat the throne, surely those in charge had everything under control.”
“She loved the wolf-souled, who saw everything except for reason, who knew the only thing to do in a senseless world is start a howl of defiance echoing through the sky. The only ones for Rae were the wild ones, burning with a fire that would light up or burn down a world, but never go out.” (This is a paraphrase of Kerouac!)
“This type of heroine was never like the other girls. Ironically, this made them all very similar.”
“Heroines were always showing an anachronistic disregard for social class!”
“She held her brother’s sword as close as a childhood toy, and whispered, “I am half sick of waiting, Marius.” (Tennyson!)
“Mention of small breasts was perfectly acceptable and overlooked in books, while any character who happened to have a large chest was regarded as obtrusively pneumatic. Heroines didn’t get their tits out.”
“Half agony, half hope” (Austen!)
“That was the problem with a villain who would kill anybody, Rae thought with terrible clarity. You could pretend this was a video game, with every victim a faceless nonentity, but a villain who would kill anybody would eventually kill somebody you cared about. Someone brave and beloved, and that death would cast a light on all the other deaths and show their horror.”
“Listen, I wanted to make one thing clear. I know how fake engagements usually go, but please do not fall in love with me. I don’t mean that as a fun challenge. I have enough to deal with.”
“Had we but world enough and time” (Marvell!)
“I saw the red flags and I said red’s my favourite colour.”
“What a generous heart this woman had. Affection to spare for all the countless men to whom she was betrothed.”
If Long Live Evil (which I loved with my whole heart) was a campy, sparkling piece of costume jewelry, All Hail Chaos is a darkly glimmering black diamond. This picks up right where LLE left off, and Rae (and the reader) is deeply unsure how darling murderous puppy Key feels about her after she feigned nonchalance during his murder to save herself. This uncertainty — and the knowledge that her misunderstanding of the original novel led to this predicament — mean that Rae is on edge throughout the book, constantly trying to figure Key out and stay one step ahead of everyone else, and she can't exuberantly play with the story the way she did in LLE.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Rae’s metafictional awareness: heroines have demurely sized breasts, fake engagements lead to falling in love for real, readers will forgive all sorts of villainous deeds if committed by someone attractive. Sarah Rees Brennan is also clearly marvelously well-read, and sprinkles paraphrases of famous lines from classic literature — from Kerouac to Tennyson to Marvell — throughout the story. You’d have to have been an English major to catch all the references, but they (and Rae’s gimlet awareness of romantasy tropes) are delightful Easter eggs.
Our intrepid cast of secondary characters spend most of the novel away from all but their love interests: Emer and Lia are hiding in the Cauldron, the Golden Cobra and Lord Marius are off to the Valerius estate to save Marius' little sister, and Rae of course is at the Palace on the Edge with Key. The Cobra and Rae exchange letters, though, as they piece together how the original story has changed and figure out what does and does not work to as they try to fix it.
The romance that had me kicking my feet the most (to my surprise!) was Eric / Marius. We got just a hint at the end of LLE that Marius might have caught feelings, and those feelings have put down deep roots at this point. He doesn't yet seem to have admitted his feelings to himself, however, despite Eric doing his best to nudge him in that direction.
Lia… Lia I have thoughts about! Really intrigued to see where her character goes in Book 3.
Speaking of book 3… Sarah Rees Brennan has once again ended the book on a MASSIVE CLIFFHANGER (immediately following a pretty big unexpected reveal), and I am simply beside myself at how long I'll have to wait for it 😭
***
“Book boyfriends: you get older, they stay the same age. It gets awkward.”
“some readers defined “morally grey” as “a remorseless murderer who is good-looking”.
“It’s nice in a way, how books change. If the magic and illumination isn’t in the story any more, the magic and illumination was always in you. The story caught a reflection of you at the right time.”
“Treating everybody in the world as if they mattered would be disastrous for the economy.”
“Despite the horrors, people fell back into living their lives in the same old way. They wanted to talk about change but remain comfortable. Surely a true king or a just god would come soon, but tomorrow, not today. The enemy might be at the gates, but they surely wouldn’t get inside. No matter who sat the throne, surely those in charge had everything under control.”
“She loved the wolf-souled, who saw everything except for reason, who knew the only thing to do in a senseless world is start a howl of defiance echoing through the sky. The only ones for Rae were the wild ones, burning with a fire that would light up or burn down a world, but never go out.” (This is a paraphrase of Kerouac!)
“This type of heroine was never like the other girls. Ironically, this made them all very similar.”
“Heroines were always showing an anachronistic disregard for social class!”
“She held her brother’s sword as close as a childhood toy, and whispered, “I am half sick of waiting, Marius.” (Tennyson!)
“Mention of small breasts was perfectly acceptable and overlooked in books, while any character who happened to have a large chest was regarded as obtrusively pneumatic. Heroines didn’t get their tits out.”
“Half agony, half hope” (Austen!)
“That was the problem with a villain who would kill anybody, Rae thought with terrible clarity. You could pretend this was a video game, with every victim a faceless nonentity, but a villain who would kill anybody would eventually kill somebody you cared about. Someone brave and beloved, and that death would cast a light on all the other deaths and show their horror.”
“Listen, I wanted to make one thing clear. I know how fake engagements usually go, but please do not fall in love with me. I don’t mean that as a fun challenge. I have enough to deal with.”
“Had we but world enough and time” (Marvell!)
“I saw the red flags and I said red’s my favourite colour.”
“What a generous heart this woman had. Affection to spare for all the countless men to whom she was betrothed.”
Want to read
February 15, 2025September cannot come soon enough 😭 (KEY MY BELOVED I MISS U ALREADY)
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
One thing about me is I am actually god's favorite etch a sketch so you better beliiiiiieeevvveee I don't recall that much from the first book. Luckily, for me at least, this book spent a bit of time rehashing events from the first book. I don't know how others who remember things better than I do or recently read the first book would feel about this, but for me and my memory, I was grateful.
I ended up liking this book way more than the first book, it felt like a really funny satire of high fantasy novels. So for me, I knew enough to know what was a good hearted ribbing of typical fantasy tropes and also probably simultaneously not enough of fantasy tropes to still be entertained by anything that wasn't satirical.
I guess what stopped this for being a five star read for me is I didn't really care enough about Emer's and Lia's side plot. (Though the twist about Emer was BONKERSSSS!) Similarly I wasn't into Caracalla's chapters either. I liked her enough, like she was perfectly funny, but I really just wanted to flip between my four favorite characters: Eric, Marius, Rae, and Key. Plus I sort of feel like flipping to certain character's POVs that didn't exactly further the plot which led to a lot of pacing issues and bloating of the story. Like, sorry, but I didn't need Pio's POV. All his chapters could have been cut and the story would have been absolutely fine. But I can't deny the worldbuilding in this book absolutely rocked, we see a lot more in this book than the first and that really worked in its favor. And man, can the author end on an absolute CLIFF HANGER that keeps me coming back to this series every. single. time!
Currently sitting outside Sarah Rees Brennan's house, silently crying and waiting for the third book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.
I ended up liking this book way more than the first book, it felt like a really funny satire of high fantasy novels. So for me, I knew enough to know what was a good hearted ribbing of typical fantasy tropes and also probably simultaneously not enough of fantasy tropes to still be entertained by anything that wasn't satirical.
I guess what stopped this for being a five star read for me is I didn't really care enough about Emer's and Lia's side plot. (Though the twist about Emer was BONKERSSSS!) Similarly I wasn't into Caracalla's chapters either. I liked her enough, like she was perfectly funny, but I really just wanted to flip between my four favorite characters: Eric, Marius, Rae, and Key. Plus I sort of feel like flipping to certain character's POVs that didn't exactly further the plot which led to a lot of pacing issues and bloating of the story. Like, sorry, but I didn't need Pio's POV. All his chapters could have been cut and the story would have been absolutely fine. But I can't deny the worldbuilding in this book absolutely rocked, we see a lot more in this book than the first and that really worked in its favor. And man, can the author end on an absolute CLIFF HANGER that keeps me coming back to this series every. single. time!
Currently sitting outside Sarah Rees Brennan's house, silently crying and waiting for the third book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Want to read
October 2, 2025Ahh this has been pushed back to April. The disappointment 🤌
unreleased
December 5, 2025this cover 😫✋ i’m so hyped for this
i miss Marcus the most tho 🥀
i miss Marcus the most tho 🥀
Want to read
February 2, 2025I need this immediately 😍
Want to read
December 2, 2025I can't wait to read this and I think about it ALL THE TIME
Want to read
December 28, 2024🕯🕯🕯 For September to come tomorrow.
Want to read
November 6, 2024i need this book in my life T-T
Want to read
June 26, 2025i. cant. freaking. wait CAN WE SKIP TO 2026 PLEEAAASSEEE
Want to read
January 24, 2025I WANT THIS PLS
Want to read
February 9, 2025SOO (UN)PREPARED FOR THIS MASTERPIECE😩😩❤️
Want to read
February 23, 2025it’s rare that I jump to add a sequel to my TBR but here we are!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Readers who enjoyed Long Live Evil can rejoice as we return to Rae in revising her favorite fantasy book world and reaping what she sowed. Some core events of the books remain and some things shift faster than the stairwells at a magical boarding school, and Rae tries to use her knowledge to stay ahead of the story. Rae's role as villainess may get upgraded to evil queen and consort to her favorite character, but sometimes when you get what you thought you wanted, you start to wonder if it is really what you want. All Hail Chaos shines its light on all of the chaos created by Rae's deviation from the established plot of the series with a slightly darker note than the first book in the series, but still holding on to a spirit of irreverent humor.
I received access to this eARC thru NetGalley (for which I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher, Orbit Books) for an honest review. The opinion expressed here is my own.
I received access to this eARC thru NetGalley (for which I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher, Orbit Books) for an honest review. The opinion expressed here is my own.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.5 stars
While the beginning was a bit slower than that of Long Live Evil, even though this picks up immediately after the end of the first book, the chaos chaosed into a full crescendo by the end of this book. There were so many exciting things in this, from the epigraph of chapter ten that I screamed over to the various reveals. I love this book, I love this series, I need book three immediately.
While the beginning was a bit slower than that of Long Live Evil, even though this picks up immediately after the end of the first book, the chaos chaosed into a full crescendo by the end of this book. There were so many exciting things in this, from the epigraph of chapter ten that I screamed over to the various reveals. I love this book, I love this series, I need book three immediately.
Want to read
October 15, 2025I've ordered it on Amazon > now the long wait till april...
Want to read
November 18, 2025come to mummy asap please
Want to read
November 30, 2025i miss my family so much but also please not another musical number 😞 i’ll do anything
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews