Writing as traitorous as the characters but you’ll love both all the more for it. A dark academia fantasy romance that earns every second.
En is a war-tank and the ultimate magical combat weapon under the control of the Archmagus. She has been sent on a mission to track down and capture a band of traitors exiled to a remote island after a failed coup. They should be dead since no one has been able to survive on the island, but they aren’t and the Archmagus wants to know why. Tamol is a traitor to crown and friends, she is messy, unreliable, and all over the place. When En and her commanders run into Tamol on the island, at first she appears to be an army deserter. But as the island does it’s best to rid itself of the new arrivals, En finds out there is so much more to Tamol and the secrets she is keeping could be the key to finding the rest of the traitors but also something about En she has long forgotten…
While romance is an element I tend to shy away from for personal reasons in general, I was all in on this one. This is the romance I want! The publisher’s premise calls this a romantic fantasy, but this is absolutely a romance first even if a low spice one. It’s one that builds slowly and feels deeply earned and hard-won. There are a lot of fantasy and world-building elements that are left to fall away around the edges that I would have loved to seen explored further if this was a fantasy-first. A few times, I had to double check that this wasn’t a series because I felt like it could have been.
Maxwell expertly crafts a narrative that isn’t predictable. There is a lot of depth and history built around En and Tamol’s relationship but also the rest of the group of traitors as well. Partly set in academia in the past and a mysterious remote island in the present, the narrative smoothly jumps timelines before and after the coup attempt.
There is a heavy theme of body autonomy, control, and conditioned beliefs. As a war-tank, En is taught absolute loyalty to her commanders through pain and “alignment”. Once of my favorite parts of this story was En’s journey of “misalignment” and how powerful yet terrifying it can be to condition someone through nothing more than their own mind.
Recommended for readers who want more stories of sapphic love, queer identities, friendship, betrayal, rebellion, and fighting back against those who are desperate to control the narrative for their own gain. Also for readers who enjoy humor and wit in writing and characters!!
Thank you to TOR for the review copy via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.
Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell comes out in the US from TOR on December 1, 2026 and you can support this blog and pre-order at the same time using the bookshop.org link below! 🙂
About the Author (they/she) from their website:
Everina Maxwell is the author of Winter’s Orbit, a queer romantic space opera about a diplomat who enters into an arranged marriage to save his planet.
She grew up in Sussex, UK, which has come a long way from the days of Cold Comfort Farm and now has things like running water and Brighton Pier. She was lucky enough to live near a library that stocked Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne McCaffrey and Terry Pratchett, so spent all her spare time devouring science fiction and doorstopper fantasy, with her family’s Georgette Heyer collection always a reliable friend when the library books ran out.
She first took part in NaNoWriMo in 2004 and continues to precariously balance writing, a day job, and watching Let’s Plays of video games she claims she doesn’t have time to play. She lives and works in Yorkshire.
About the Publisher from their website:
Tor Books, the flagship imprint of Tor Publishing Group, publishes what is arguably the largest and most diverse line of science fiction and fantasy ever produced by a single house. Tor’s mission is to publish out-of-this-world genre fiction and bring readers books that fuel the imagination. We are dedicated to creating publishing partnerships, and support the authors that entrust us with their work. We strive every year to further increase the diversity of our list, publishing authors from a variety of backgrounds and increasing positive representation of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and body and gender diversity through fiction. Over the forty-plus years since its founding, Tor Books has achieved multiple international bestsellers and hundreds of award winners across major SFF categories and beyond, celebrated and nurtured new talent, and created global brands in partnership with its sister company, Tor UK. The Tor Books mandate is to continue our role as market leader, using our publishing vision and our passion for books to champion our authors globally.
TOR is a part of Macmillan and they need to do better in terms of both diverse rep and posting about diverse rep especially on their Instagram. For example, in 2026 they only had one post for the whole of Black History month when I did my publisher review earlier this year.
