About the Book

Book: Of Dawn and Embers (The Fireborn Epic Book Three)

Author: Gillian Bronte Adams

Genre: YA Epic Fantasy

Release Date: January 13, 2026

He rides a dawnling, a steed of light and glory, destined to restore.

Jakim Ha’Nor will save his people, or so says the prophecy that upended his life and drove his brothers to betray him. Now, he has returned as the dawnrider to fulfill his purpose and reconcile with his brothers—only to find himself embroiled in a war.

Captured in the fallout of a deadly attack, Rafi grapples with the ghosts of the past. His brother is alive but no longer himself, and Rafi will stop at nothing to save him. Farther up the coast, Ceridwen strives to reignite the embers of the rebellion to burn the empire down. When Rafi is sentenced to execution before the imperial court, Ceridwen must rally every spear and steed she can for a blistering strike at the heart of the capital.

But the empire’s schemes are already in motion, and Jakim’s two missions collide when an unexpected encounter with one of his brothers reveals the true threat behind the imperial thirst for ancient secrets. Hidden forces intend to unleash a cataclysmic power, spurring Ceridwen, Rafi, and Jakim to challenge the full, crushing might of the empire for the fate of the world.

Stars weep and ash falls as the tides of battle propel the Fireborn queen, the Sea-Demon prince, and the Dawnrider priest toward a meteoric clash in this thunderous series finale.

 

Click here to get your copy!

 

About the Author

Gillian Bronte Adams is a sword-wielding, horse-riding, wander-loving fantasy author, rarely found without a coffee in hand and rumored to pack books before clothes when she hits the road. Working in youth ministry left her with a passion for journeying alongside children and teens. (It also enhanced her love of coffee.) Now, she writes novels that follow outcast characters down broken roads, through epic battles, and onward to adventure. And at the end of a long day of typing, she can be found saddling her wild thing and riding off into the sunset, seeking adventures of her own (and more coffee).

 

 

More from Gillian

This is, at its core, a book about hope. I discovered that fact partway through the writing process. Of Dawn and Embers is the cataclysmic finale to an epic fantasy trilogy where warriors bond with elemental warhorses and the action sequences strike with ever-increasing intensity from page one, and I was halfway through drafting it before I realized that beneath the searing visuals, the blistering pace, and the moments that set your heart thundering in your chest, this story sings with hope as a powerful undercurrent.

But you’re the author, you say. How could you not already know that?

Some authors go into each project with a specific theme in mind. They begin fully aware of the deeper meaning of the story they want to tell, and they intentionally structure the sequences of the unfolding plot and character arcs to match. I, on the other hand—while an avid worldbuilder who loves creating layered fantasy stories with multiple characters facing their own paths of growth—often wind up surprised by the overarching themes that also surface through those characters’ individual journeys.

Themes of identity and worth. Of finding the beauty in our broken stories. And, in this case, of hope.

Not the soft and feathery kind, fluttering in your chest. Or the brightly optimistic kind that lends itself to cheerful sayings. But the kind of hope that dares to kneel in the ashes, with blood on its teeth and knuckles, and trust that the sun will rise again. The kind of hope that endures and keeps on enduring. The kind of hope that is as stubborn and resilient as an ember’s deep and fiery glow, waiting to be rekindled with a touch of the morning breeze.

That’s the kind of hope that I find myself clinging to in my own life. Because we live in an age where discouragement can seem rampant, flung in our faces with each news cycle and with every moment spent scrolling on this or that screen.

Even once I uncovered that underlying theme, it wasn’t until I reached the end of the first draft and started working back through that I realized just how deeply it had already been woven into the story. It was there in each breathtaking moment of connection between characters, in the first touch of gold breaking through the cloud-wrack, in the hearty meals shared around a fireside, in the friends who refuse to leave one another to face the darkness alone, and in the loyalty that proves a greater defense than any shield or weapon.

It fairly came singing to me off every page, a reflection on hope at the heart of the book.

On the ache of hope. The seeming foolishness of hope. The defiance of hope. The way hope can feel like fresh air to oxygen-starved lungs, and the way it can cause your chest to ache with the fear of losing it again. The way it holds you up and keeps you standing long after you expected to be on your knees. And the way a lack of hope can leave you grasping for some sense of control, lashing out in desperation to find your own way forward after you put your hope in something that proved incapable of enduring.

In the prologue, one of the main characters, Jakim, compares holding onto hope in the midst of hardship as a candle flame that he has had to grip tightly to shield from the buffeting winds to keep it from going out. And “lately, it had felt like the only way to keep it alive was to grasp it so tightly it singed him.”

If you’ve ever faced the long and aching wait for a hope to be realized, you know what it feels like for hope to sting. Proverbs 13:12 (NIV) talks about how “hope deferred makes the heart sick” but Hebrews 6:19 tells us where we can find that true and lasting hope that exists as “an anchor for our souls”: through the One who stepped into the darkest night in our place and took on our own hopeless state so that He could become our hope.

A hope that endures. That breathes life. That does not falter or fail. That doesn’t slip away. That isn’t in danger of burning out if we grip it too tightly.

A hope that holds onto us.

Later on, Jakim comes to the restorative realization that “Hope was not a candle flame. It was the dawn. Rising again and again after darkest night.”

Rising without any effort of his own. Rising beyond the pain of his circumstances. Rising steadfastly day by day.

And throughout the wild ups and downs of this book, through the aching chill of the dark nights and the resplendent glories of the new dawns, I hope that readers will walk away with that same assurance singing hope into their souls.

Interview with the Author

• What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?

This year, while I was at my publisher’s recording studio narrating the audiobook for Of Dawn and Embers, I had the opportunity to visit the Marion E. Wade Center over at Wheaten College to see their Inklings collection. I grew up on The Lord of the Rings, so I have always been a huge Tolkien fan, and I also love Lewis’s works. I got to take a picture with Tolkien’s desk and opened up Lewis’s wardrobe to find it filled with fur coats. They had displays with artwork and notes and various items from all of the members of the Inklings. They even had a number of Tolkien’s letters, and I was blown away by the beauty of his penmanship. So much intentionality went into making each letter a work of art, and it just struck me that we don’t tend to treat ordinary things like that with the same care and craftsmanship in our current day.

• What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

I love Greywolf’s Heart by C.M. Banschbach. If I could convince everyone to read it, I would! It’s an incredible brother story set in a tribe that rides giant wolves as they seek to defend their territory against a tribe that rides saber tooth cats, and the emotional roller coaster ride of the action and character growth is truly fantastic. Every now and then as an author, you come across another author whose work has a kindred heart and soul, and though your writing style and storytelling might be different, and there’s a unique flavor to the books you both write, there’s a harmony to them too. That’s how I feel every time I pick up one of C.M. Baschbach’s books, and while I’m lucky enough to consider her one of my good friends too, I always tell people that when I read her books, I forget that I know the person who wrote it because I’m so swept away by the story!

• How do you select the names of your characters?

It is always a process for me! I’m actually working on a new project right now where I changed the main character’s name at least ten times while brainstorming before finding the one. I love to experiment with the name until I find the right tone and feel for the character’s personality, their culture, and the story that I want to tell. I do write fantasy, and while sometimes fantasy names can be so complex and out-of-this-world that it can feel off-putting, I also find that there’s nothing that feels quite so jarring as finding a character with a very ordinary name in the midst of an unordinary world. So, I do a lot of research, browse a ton of name dictionaries, and experiment until I find the right one!

• What was your hardest scene to write?

Of Dawn and Embers is the third and final book in The Fireborn Epic, and it has a particularly intense climax that is the culmination of the entire series. So, since it is a multiple POV book with multiple storylines, there were a lot of threads coming together in the final 100+ pages of the book—a lot of complex and emotional character moments, plot twists, and intense heart-in-your-throat sequences playing out across several connected scenes that were all very difficult to write.

One chapter in particular left me very intimidated, and I started and stopped it probably four different times, before I decided that I just needed to force myself to get it drafted. So, I sat down to write one evening, and I brewed a pot of coffee, and I kept writing and I did not stop, and I finally finished it at 5 am! That one was a tough one, for sure, and while I did end up reworking that chapter in revisions, that first initial draft gave me all of the pieces I needed, and now, reading it, I’m so proud of it!

• What is your favorite childhood book?

I grew up on The Lord of the Rings—my dad gave me my own copy when I was seven and I carried it around with me everywhere. So, that book has been a lifelong favorite. But another book I remember loving as a child was Enemy Brothers by Constance Savory. I took it with me to summer camp when I was eleven and read it in my bunk with a flashlight in my sleeping bag after lights out. It was written during WWII and gives such a unique and interesting look into life in England at the time, and it’s a story about brothers and complicated sibling relationships, which are two things I’ve always loved.

• If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?

I actually started writing fairly young. I read voraciously and did a lot of creative writing as a teenager, both of which I think did a lot toward setting me on the path to becoming a writer. I do wish that I hadn’t let my fear of failing or of being bad at something stop me from trying new things quite so often as a teenager. Not that any of us particularly love failing or being bad at something, but my years of writing have taught me that the more you can weather that feeling of being bad at something, the more resilience you’ll have as a writer.

So much of writing feels like failing—it’s writing a whole chapter wrong so you can figure out how to get it right; it’s sending your draft off to get edits so you can make it better; it’s fighting your way through the act two slog where every word is a challenge and you’re afraid you’ve completely forgotten everything you knew about writing, when really, that’s just part of the process—and the more you build up your tolerance to push through that feeling, the better off you’ll be!

• What comes first, the plot or characters?

It honestly varies from project to project, depending on where the initial story spark comes from. Sometimes I get a strong visual for a character and then have to discover what their story is. Other times, I have the world first and a sense of a plot and then discover who it is about. For The Fireborn Epic, I actually developed the world and plot separately, thinking I was working on two different projects! I had an idea for a world with magical breeds of horses and was having a lot of fun brainstorming their capabilities but couldn’t come up with the right story to do them justice. Meanwhile, I was separately working on the story of an heir who is cast out by her father after a tragic accident claims her brother, only to return several years later to lead her people in their fight against an invading nation … and I loved her story, but I felt like the world I’d imagined for her was kind of boring.

It was months before I had idea to combine my horse world with my outcast heir’s story, and I never could have dreamed how the resulting explosion of inspiration would cause it to grow into the epic series it’s become today, with its three main characters and storylines and much bigger and deeper themes of growing beyond the ashes of our past and finding hope in the darkest night.

• Who is the author you most admire in your genre?

There are actually so many people that I could name here, it’s hard to choose! I feel like J.R.R. Tolkien goes without saying because his stories feel as real and alive and meaningful today as the day they were written. There’s a timeless quality to the themes of his work. I have loved many of Brandon Sanderson’s books as well, and I truly admire the way that he seeks to uplift other authors through his own success. And I daily get to interact online with so many authors of truly fantastic speculative fiction (both traditionally and independently published) who seek to build communities that are uplifting and encouraging as they intentionally cultivate their craft, and I respect and admire them so much.

• What do you like to do when you are not writing?

I love getting outdoors and hiking or kayaking, and I take every chance I can find to run off to the mountains. I also adore curling up on the couch with my dog and a good book. There’s also something very restorative about chopping vegetables and cooking up a giant pot of soup or something warm and cozy to share with family or friends.

• If you could invite one person to dinner, who would it be and what would you cook?

Oh that’s a tough one. I know J.R.R. Tolkien is no longer with us, but I would have loved to meet him. I’d invite him over for a pot of soup—good, cozy hobbit fare—and I’d love to learn everything I could about his creative process.

Blog Stops

The Lofty Pages, January 27

Simple Harvest Reads, January 28 (Author Interview)

Vicky Sluiter, January 29 (Spotlight)

Artistic Nobody, January 30 (Author Interview)

For the Love of Literature, January 31 (Spotlight)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, January 31

Blossoms and Blessings, February 1 (Spotlight)

Guild Master, February 2 (Author Interview)

Stories By Gina, February 3 (Spotlight)

Book Holds and Jello Molds, February 3

Fiction Book Lover, February 4 (Author Interview)

Jodie Wolfe – Stories Where Hope and Quirky Meet, February 5 (Spotlight)

Texas Book-aholic, February 6

A Reader’s Brain , February 7 (Spotlight)

Tell Tale Book Reviews, February 8 (Author Interview)

A Modern Day Fairy Tale, February 9 (Spotlight)

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Gillian is giving away the grand prize of a $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Card and copy of the book!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://gleam.io/yIAxb/of-dawn-and-embers-celebration-tour-giveaway