Order of Swans

One month ago, Jude Deveraux released Order of Swans, the first in her Blue Swan duology. This blend of fantasy and sci-fi follows Kaley, a PhD student devoted to folklore, who gets sucked into a real-life fairy tale… on another planet. She and two companions (Tanek and Sojee) are on a mission to find a lost prince, but they are left in the dark about a lot of other things. Beyond their trek around the kingdom, Kaley is also developing feelings for Tanek, unavailable as he seems to be.

Why I Chose This Book:

I love fairy tales and fantasy, and I was intrigued by a woman who has the power to rewrite those stories we all know so well. A quest, romance, and some unexpected magical twists, and I thought this would be a fun, escapist read.

What I Liked:

• Fairy tales, from Hansel and Gretel to Cinderella and more (the original versions, not the Disney movies!)
• The 10th Kingdom vibes
• Kaley’s love of animals and ability to communicate with them
• Bonkers, often in a good way

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• Kaley is extremely naive, trusting, gullible… dumb. It takes her a concerningly long time to actually start to suspect something is amiss. Like girl, look around you. This goes beyond things being lost in translation or cultural differences. She just blindly accepts everything and asks no questions despite everything being beyond sus the entire time. Make her make sense as a character.
• The plot and world-building are really uneven and underdeveloped. It’s confusing and honestly makes no sense (both to the readers and to the three main characters themselves).
• What was that ending. It’s not a cliffhanger, it just… stops.

Audiobook

Alexandra Hunter is probably the best thing about Order of Swans. She narrates the whole book brilliantly, making me want to continue listening even as my hopes for the story itself kept dwindling. She gives great personality and voice to each character here.

Final Thoughts

Order of Swans is a hard book to rate. I wanted to love it, and indeed, I did enjoy so much about it. But its faults are impossible to ignore. There are just too many holes and a main character who is honestly too clueless to believe in.

This novel doesn’t really do anything to set up the next book in the Blue Swan duology. It just stops in the middle of the action, so if you want to know how it ends, you’ll need to read the next installment. There’s virtually nothing wrapped up, which only adds to the frustration.

All that said, I kind of enjoyed Order of Swans? But I can’t say I’d really recommend it unless you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Special thanks to Harlequin Trade Publishing, MIRA, Harlequin Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Order of Swans here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

Order of Swans by Jude Deveraux
Audiobook Narrator	Alexandra Hunter
Series	The Blue Swan Duology (#1)
Audience	Adult
Genre	Fantasy; Science Fiction
Setting	Other Planet
Number of Pages	336
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	January 28, 2025
Publisher	MIRA

Official Summary

“A captivating blend of science fiction, fantasy, and fairy tale reimagining that challenges traditional genre boundaries. . . . an engaging, thought-provoking reading experience that challenges and delights in equal measure.”  —Medium

In this spellbinding, fantasy-rich romance, a woman is swept into a world where she has the power to alter fairy tales, and change a kingdom’s destiny…

To Kaley Arens, a PhD student and expert in folklore, fairy stories have always had a power and an allure beyond mere entertainment.

It’s only when Kaley accompanies her lifelong friend Jobi on a visit to his home that she realizes how much she still has to learn. Bellis isn’t the remote island that she believed it to be. It’s another world—a stunningly beautiful and seductive one, with its own royalty, its own rules, and inhabitants who breathe life into the tales she was taught were fiction.

Kaley’s presence is no simple holiday. She has a mysterious connection with Jobi and with Bellis, and abilities that may help determine this world’s fate. Tasked with locating a lost prince, Kaley and her companions—the enigmatic Tanek, a member of the Order of Swans, and Sojee, Kaley’s colossal bodyguard—journey through a land both thrilling and terrifying, where the uncanny and the familiar go hand in hand.

But in fairy tales, heroes and villains are easy to discern. Here, nothing is quite as it seems. And though Kaley is discovering that she can change the outcome of the fairy tales she knows so well, her own story is unfolding in ways impossible to predict, with a destiny she could never have foretold…