On Sale: 14/05/2026
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN:9781037401176
Seek The Traitors Son is the latest full length novel from Veronica Roth, who is probably most known for writing the Divergent series. It’s also a surprising book – it defies genre in some fairly explosive ways, it has a love story that makes Violet and Xaden or Feyre and Rhysand look positively pedestrian, and it is probably one of the best books I have read this year. I read a lot but I don’t re-read particularly widely – my ‘Favourites’ list on StoryGraph is made up of all of Sarah J Maas’ back-catalogue, the Empyrean Series, 2 very old Nora Robert’s Trilogies and Deborah Harkness A Discovery of Witches series. Yet despite me telling my husband halfway through Chapter 2 that I was sure this was a 3 star book and I was unlikely to rate it much higher, by completion I was ready to reread the entire book there and then.
This is an excellent novel, slow start aside. Things ramp up rapidly from chapter 3 onward, so if you also find the initial chapters a bit slow, stick with it because I promise you will find action, heartbreak, revenge and threaded all the way through it, a truly brilliant sci-fi (probably) thriller. The characters are fantastically well constructed- even the villains are incredibly human and tangible in a way that speaks to Roth’s skill as a writer. Theren Forint, the male protagonist is, I would say, the next big Book Boyfriend to hit BookTok – which I am not on- but he’s actually a really nice foil to the arch-masculinity of Rhysand, Cassian, Rowan, Xaden and Hunt (iykyk!). He’s got no wings, and a traumatic past, but he’s poetic and perceptive. Obviously, in Seek the Traitors Son, we’re dealing with humans (enhanced respectively with ‘elixir’ or ‘The Fever’), but there are no possessive Fae bastards to be found, just humans and complicated human politics. Perfection.
I do think that there’s a significant trigger warning to be given for the depiction of The Fever. Looking at interviews with Roth, this book has been being written for about 6 years. I don’t think it’s impolite to suggest that the highly contagious virus spread through breath and blood that gives the domineering enemy state (The Talusar) standing opposite Elegy Ahn, (the very likeable protagonist) their enhanced powers, is at least inspired by Covid-19, and the way society responded to that pandemic. As someone who ended up in ICU when I contracted Covid in 2021 (from a hospital appointment to investigate health problems the first infection in 2020 left me with!), while I didn’t find it particularly PTSD triggering, I was conscious of my emotional response to the depictions of The Fever and how it spread, and of how much it made me dislike The Talusar, and their approach to the virus. I would be interested to know if my assessment that The Fever is inspired by Covid, and if the Talusar were inspired by the groups of people who found the concept of vaccines, masking and trying not to contract the killer virus to be an affront to their civil liberties, is accurate. It certainly feels like it is as you read the book.
Overall, this books means I am looking forward to the sequel (due out in early 2027) actually more than I am looking forward to ACOTAR 6 and 7 coming out, and given those releases were my expected literary highlight of the next 12 months, that should be taken as quite a statement. I think the Burning Empire duology has the chance to become the first series I reach for to reread, in the next 2 years- and that is no small thing.
Rating (out of five): 🛡️🛡️🛡️🛡️🛡️
Do Expect: Genre defying narrative, betrayal, heartbreak, and the mildest smattering of spice
Don’t Expect: predictable twists, villains you can outright hate, pain-free love
