In the canal-bright city of Larkhaven, apprentice brewer Eira Thistledown discovers a banned recipe in a brass-bound grimoire: the Draught of the Dragon's Dream. To save her fever-struck brother, she distills the shimmering brew with riversilk, phoenix salt, and a scale bought in the fossil market, and is pulled into the sleeping mind of Vaelith beneath Mount Glaswyrm. Inside the Embersea, where cities are carved from cooled lightning and time moves on old lullabies, Eira finds herself hunted by Marlo Quent of the Alchemists' Guild, who seeks the dragon's true name.
Guided by the half-ghost librarian Ser Jorin and a bell cast from rain, Eira must cross three dream-labyrinths: the Orchard of Ashes, the Mirror Harbor, and the Bridge of Unsaid Words. Each victory nudges Vaelith toward waking, threatening to crack Larkhaven's glass-domed market and drain its moon-fed canals. Eira must choose to brew a second draught to deepen the sleep—or spill the first into the city's cisterns, wagering Larkhaven for a future forged in living flame.
I hoped the quest would cohere more cleanly.
By vibe, this sits between the tidal-city moods of The Drowned Almanac and the alchemical wandering of Saltfire Letters: intimate stakes inside a marvel of a setting. If you like your fantasy thoughtful, a touch strange, and tasting faintly of salt and brass, Larkhaven will reward you.
Behind the alchemy and chase sits a meditation on consent and stewardship. Naming has teeth here, and the choice to deepen sleep versus risk waking a power reframes heroism as caretaking rather than conquest. The book's most resonant emblem is the "Bridge of Unsaid Words," where what we withhold changes the future as surely as what we brew. I admired the ambition more than I loved the final emotional clarity, which arrived a little hazy for me.
Larkhaven shimmers with inventions that feel inevitable once named, from moon-fed canals and a glass-domed market to cities etched in cooled lightning across the Embersea. The dream-labyrinth rules are playful yet legible, scored to lullabies that tug at time, so every riddle feels earned and every shortcut exacts a cost.
And Vaelith sleeping beneath Mount Glaswyrm gives every doorway weight.
Eira me convenció por su mezcla de terquedad y ternura: cada decisión nace de cuidar a su hermano, pero también de una curiosidad que roza la imprudencia. Marlo Quent no es un villano plano, su ambición suena como un juramento mal aprendido, y los diálogos entre ambos chispean de doble sentido. Mi favorito es Ser Jorin, medio fantasma con modales de bibliotecario cansado, cuyo humor seco y la campana fundida de lluvia le dan a la historia un pulso íntimo.
The recipe scenes sparkle with tactile precision, from riversilk threads and phoenix salt rime to a haggled dragon scale in the fossil market. The prose leans musical without turning florid.
Structure is less sure-footed. The Orchard section lingers a beat too long, Mirror Harbor snaps cleanly, and the final crossing only finds its emotional key in the closing pages.
A canal-bright quest that moves briskly from the Orchard of Ashes to the Mirror Harbor to the Bridge of Unsaid Words. The chase through Vaelith's Embersea keeps tension simmering while Eira weighs one impossible brew against another.
