All Of Us Villains (Christine Lynn Herman) Books in Order

The All of Us Villains duology, written by Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman, takes place in Ilvernath, a remote city built around a long-running magical bargain. Every twenty years, seven founding families must each choose a teenage champion for a tournament to the death. The last person standing wins their family control of high magick, a rare and powerful resource that can strengthen any spell.

It is a terrible system, and everyone involved knows it. The families have spent generations treating it as their duty, their right, or both. This time, though, an anonymous book has revealed the tournament to the public. Reporters, tourists, and spell hunters descend on Ilvernath just as the Blood Moon approaches. The competitors have more attention and more information than past champions, but neither makes the situation safer.

The story moves among several of the teens sent into the contest. Alistair Lowe comes from the family that Ilvernath has always cast as its villains. Briony Thorburn has been raised to see herself as a hero. Isobel Macaslan is under intense pressure to win, while Gavin Grieve has spent much of his life treated as an outsider. Their histories and family stories give each of them a different idea of what survival, loyalty, and victory might mean.

No one enters the arena empty-handed.

The magic has a practical, dangerous edge. Common spells can be bought, stored, and used as tools or weapons, while high magick remains the prize at the center of the curse. The tournament's rules force the champions to weigh every alliance against the chance that a friend may become an enemy before the end. At the same time, many of them begin asking whether winning is really the only possible outcome.

All of Us Villains starts the competition and establishes the rivalries, family pressure, and public spectacle surrounding it. All of Our Demise picks up as the tournament's old structure begins to fail, pushing the surviving champions into even harder choices. The books are closely connected, so they work best read straight through in order.

Expect dark fantasy, multiple viewpoints, and a lot of messy feelings beneath the spellcasting. The series is interested in the gap between the roles families give their children and the people those children may choose to become. It is violent at times, but its strongest tension comes from the question hanging over every champion: can they break an inherited story without repeating its worst parts?