Cordelia Castel Books in Order
Find Cordelia Castel books in order, with series lists, quick summaries, reading-order notes, and where to start with her YA fantasy worlds.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
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Publication Order
24 books
The Academy
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Cendrilla joins the Academy to escape Lord Bluebeard, but the one safe place she can imagine forbids magic. Keeping her powers hidden may be just as dangerous as facing her betrothed.
The Banishment
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Cendrilla heads toward Tundra after the Snow Queen abducts Crown Prince Alec. To confront an old evil, she must seek help from fairies whose gifts may carry a dangerous price.
The Betrothal
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Cendrilla’s troubles deepen when Bluebeard’s squire abducts her and forces new bargains. As ogres, magic, and old secrets close in, she starts uncovering the truth about her origins.
The Bluebird
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Paloma is a fairy reeling from betrayal when a bond ties her life to Orson, a handsome ogre who despises fairies. To survive, she must win his heart without revealing too much.
The Frozen Heart
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Queen Elisa sees marriage to King January as a way out of icy banishment and into power. Then real feeling complicates her plan, leaving the Snow Queen torn between conquest and love.
The Kingdom
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Cursed, blamed for missing babies, and facing a bitter father, Cendrilla must solve one last tangle of magic and politics. The final Seven Kingdoms arc also forces her to choose her future.
The Magestaff
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Sixteen-year-old Cendrilla Perrault is sold to the wife-killing Lord Bluebeard and runs for the Anti-Magic Capital. Armed with a forbidden magical staff, she crosses badlands filled with trolls, bandits, and worse.
The Stepmother
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Candide Perrault thinks she has won by selling Cendrilla to an ogre and taking her mansion. When Cendrilla escapes, constables, gossip, and Bluebeard’s anger turn Candide’s perfect crime into punishment.
The Usurper
by Cordelia Castel
2018
With the Snow Queen preparing to seize the United Kingdom of Seven, Cendrilla’s magic grows faster than she can control. Deadly traps and rival suitors make her next quest even more dangerous.
The Witch-Hunt
by Cordelia Castel
2018
Cendrilla sets out after a band of trolls to rescue the women she swore to protect. With illegal magic and uncertain allies, she becomes a kingdom’s best hope against the Snow Queen’s plans.
Pariah of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
Alba is ordered to stay out of trouble, but missing dragonets make that impossible. A mysterious thief and a sinister force at Mount Fornax put her bond with Fyrian, and her future, at risk.
Patron of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
The spriggans move against Mount Fornax, hoping to raise the Forgotten King and reclaim power over dragons. Alba and Fyrian must trust unlikely allies for one final fight for dragon-kind.
Plague of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
A strange sickness sweeps through the dragons of Mount Fornax, and suspicion turns toward Alba. With Fyrian weakened, she has to work with uneasy allies to find the cause before the plague turns deadly.
Poacher of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
Alba and Fyrian face a new crisis when dragon eggs vanish from a protected hatchery. With angry dragons, fairy magic, and King Magnar closing in, she must solve the theft before Mount Fornax erupts.
Princess of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
Princess Alba escapes a forced marriage by disguising herself as a boy at Dragon Mage Academy. When she bonds with a dragon accused of murder, proving its innocence becomes a matter of life and death.
Prisoner of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
Alba’s push for justice backfires when a trusted friend faces a deadly witch hunt. With one dragon and only days to act, she and her allies risk everything on a rescue.
Protector of Dragons
by Cordelia Castel
2019
A loyalty elixir binds the dragons to King Magnar, giving him a path to turn them into an army. Alba must sabotage his control from inside a magical trap that threatens her own freedom.
The Dragonet
by Cordelia Castel
2020
Ashira Longblade dreams of a wounded dragonet and finds the creature in real danger. Saving it is treason in Volcania, but abandoning it may cost her the only bond that feels like home.
The Princess Crown
by Cordelia Castel
2020
Zea once wanted to bring down the monarchy. Now she must work through lies, suspicion, and rebel pressure to save Prince Kevon and Phangloria before both are lost.
The Princess Games
by Cordelia Castel
2020
Zea remains inside the palace game, with the Queen determined to remove the Harvester girl who has captured Kevon’s notice. Every trial raises the cost of rebellion, romance, and survival.
The Princess Trials
by Cordelia Castel
2020
Sixteen-year-old Zea Calico enters a royal competition to spy for the rebels who raised her hopes. The glittering trials hide brutal politics, and Prince Kevon is harder to hate than she expected.
The Rapier
by Cordelia Castel
2020
Ashira reaches Mount Fornax and begins finding her place among dragon mages. A message from Volcania pulls her back into danger, where a prince, a princess, and an old threat await.
The Princess Purge
by Cordelia Castel
2021
Princess Briar expects a political marriage, not a televised hunt where the nation cheers for her death. Stranded in the Amstraad Republic, she must decide whom to trust before the game kills her.
The Princess Strike
by Cordelia Castel
2022
After surviving the Purge, Princess Briar turns her attention to the men who used her as entertainment. With the Amstraad Republic near invasion, revenge and rescue pull her in opposite directions.
Where should I start?
For dystopian romance and survival games: The Princess Trials → The Princess Games → The Princess Crown.
For more of Phangloria’s darker politics: The Princess Purge → The Princess Strike.
For fairy-tale fantasy: The Magestaff → The Academy → The Witch-Hunt.
For dragon-school adventure: Princess of Dragons → Poacher of Dragons → Plague of Dragons.
For a shorter dragon quest: The Dragonet → The Rapier.
Author bio
Cordelia Castel publishes young adult fantasy as Cordelia Castel and Cordelia K. Castel. Her public biography is brief, and she keeps the focus on the stories rather than on hometown details or a long personal timeline. What comes through clearly is the kind of tale she likes to build: brave girls, sharp weapons, dangerous magic, and fairy-tale rules that rarely behave themselves.
Her work began reaching fantasy readers with the world of the Seven Kingdoms. The Magestaff, also known in an earlier form as Cendrilla, turns the Cinderella setup into something rougher and stranger. Cendrilla Perrault is not waiting around for a slipper. She is running from Lord Bluebeard, carrying illegal magic, and trying to survive a land packed with ogres, trolls, witches, princes, and bad bargains.
That tells you a lot about Castel’s style.
She likes familiar stories, but she rarely leaves them in their glass case. The Academy, The Witch-Hunt, and the later Seven Kingdoms books keep mixing old fairy-tale pieces into a faster adventure shape. The result is a world where the joke of a name might sit beside a real threat, and where a damsel often has to rescue herself before anyone else gets organized.
Castel then moved that same world forward with Dragon Mage Academy. In that series, Princess Alba disguises herself to enter an all-male dragon academy and ends up bonded to a dragon whose fate is tied to her own. The books are built around school politics, magical mysteries, stolen eggs, sick dragons, forced loyalties, and the steady problem of keeping a secret identity from collapsing at the worst possible time.
Dragons are clearly one of her favorite toys.
She returned to them again in Dreamer of Dragons, where Ashira Longblade risks everything to save an injured dragonet in a kingdom that treats dragons as deadly enemies. Those books have a more quest-like feel, but they still carry Castel’s usual interest in outsiders, found bonds, and young heroines who make risky choices because doing nothing would be worse.
With The Princess Trials, Castel shifted into dystopian romance. Zea Calico, born into the lowest echelon of Phangloria, enters a royal competition as a rebel spy. The setup has gowns, cameras, public votes, and a prince, but the real engine is hunger, class control, political fear, and the question of whether destroying a system is the same thing as saving people.
The later Princess books, The Princess Purge and The Princess Strike, expand that world through Princess Briar and the Amstraad Republic. They lean harder into survival-game tension and public spectacle, while still asking the same basic question Castel keeps circling: what happens when a young woman who was supposed to be managed decides to fight back?
That is the through line in her fantasy. The settings change, from cursed kingdoms to dragon schools to televised trials, but the heroines keep reaching for agency in worlds designed to deny it.
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