The Traitor's Game

Jennifer Nielsen is an American author based in Utah who writes primarily for middle grade and young adult readers in the genres of fantasy and historical fiction. Nielsen’s debut novel, Elliot and the Goblin War, was published in 2010 by Sourcebooks and features a 10-year-old protagonist, Elliot, who is crowned King of the Brownies and wages war with the enemy Goblins. The series is characterized by lively humor and includes Elliot and the Pixie Plot (2011) and Elliot and the Last Underworld War (2012). The premise of warring kingdoms and a ruler who struggles with the appropriate use of magic are themes that also emerge in The Traitor’s Game series.

Nielsen’s popular Ascendance series began with The False Prince, published by Scholastic in 2012, which became a New York Times bestseller. The series centers on the adventures of an orphaned boy named Sage who is selected to impersonate the missing prince of Carytha. Subsequent books, including The Runaway King (2013) and The Shadow Throne (2015), completed what was initially a trilogy. In 2020, Scholastic released The Captive Kingdom and in 2021 The Shattered Castle as further books in the series, continuing the adventures of Sage, now King Jaron, and the wars waged with neighboring kingdoms. While the novels feature at their core a coming-of-age story, the questions of shifting alliances and the fate of one’s country are themes that make their way into The Traitor’s Game series also.

The Mark of the Thief series, which includes Mark of the Thief (2015), Rise of the Wolf (2016), and Wrath of the Storm (2017), features another young male protagonist, Nicolas Calva, and incorporates magical elements into a setting in ancient Rome. The themes and conflicts of these books, along with the subplots of family loyalties and the burden of destiny, mirror several of the same concerns in The Traitor’s Game series, which includes The Traitor’s Game (2018), The Deceiver’s Curse (2019), and The Warrior’s Curse (2020). As with the Ascendance series, the setting of The Traitor’s Game is a vaguely preindustrial world infused with magic and beset by warring kingdoms.

Rather than a single protagonist, however, The Traitor’s Game series follows both Simon and Kestra’s points of view as they both pursue the character arc of being the “chosen one” for their respective realms. In The Deceiver’s Curse, Kestra’s effort to assassinate Lord Endrick initially fails, and in retaliation he erases her memory. Kestra spends the book struggling, with Simon’s help, to recall her identity and her mission. After several near-escapes, she goes to the Blue Caves with Loelle, a physician, where Kestra comes into possession of her magic. This makes her a powerful fighter in battles against the Dominion, but makes others fear that her magic will corrupt her. Kestra is forced to leave Simon, who is made the King of the Halderians and who is betrothed to Harlyn, the daughter of a Halderian commander. The Warrior’s Curse, the concluding book of the trilogy, continues the themes of conflicting loyalties, identity, and justice as Simon emerges as King of the Halderians, Kestra lives up to her heritage, and the fate of Antora is decided.

Nielsen has also written the standalone fantasy novel The Scourge (2016) and several historical thrillers for middle-grade readers that tell stories of survival and daring featuring young protagonists. A Night Divided (2015), for instance, describes life in post-World War II Germany through the eyes of a young girl. Resistance (2018), which won several awards, depicts the struggles of a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Several more of Nielsen’s historical novels, like Lines of Courage (2022) and Words on Fire (2019), examine the impacts of war and oppression. Some of her others novels—such as Iceberg (2014), which describes the sinking of the Titanic, One Wrong Step (2025), featuring the rescue of an expedition on Mount Everest, and Magnitude (2026), which covers the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco—explore acts of courage in the face of disaster. While the conflicts of her books are large in scope, at the heart of each is the study of how a single young person can find resilience, strength, and allies to overcome obstacles and fulfill their dreams.