Mother of Death and Dawn is the final installment in Carissa Broadbent’s The War of Lost Hearts trilogy, preceded by Daughter of No Worlds and Children of Fallen Gods. The novel brings to a head the primary conflicts established in the first two books, resolving the intricate personal and political arcs of its main characters.

The trilogy begins by introducing Tisaanah Vyzetic, an enslaved woman who escapes bondage to seek magical training with the goal of liberating her people from the brutal Threllian empire. Her journey leads her to Maxantarius “Max” Farlione, a disgraced and reclusive former soldier of the Aran Orders, who is haunted by a past in which his body was inhabited by a powerful magical entity that took control of his actions and forced him to commit terrible violence. Throughout the series, their individual quests become deeply intertwined. In the first installment, Daughter of No Worlds, Tisaanah is sold into enslavement in Threll at age 13. She eventually escapes by using her magic to kill her enslaver—an act of self-defense as he is about to kill her—and becomes a fugitive. She joins the magical Orders as an apprentice and is assigned Max as a mentor.