The Mirror of Immortality Books in Order

The Mirror of Immortality shows Gilbert working in a different key. This is young adult fantasy, built from fairy-tale bones and driven by magic, danger, and hard choices. The books share a larger world shaped by an enchanted mirror, the people who want its power, and the damage that power can do.

The series opens with Crown of Ice, which follows Thyra Winther, an immortal Snow Queen racing to rebuild a shattered mirror before her eighteenth birthday. If she fails, she faces a terrible fate. Thyra starts from a cold, isolated place, and that matters. The book is not just about spells and pursuit. It is also about what happens when someone trained to survive at any cost starts to feel loyalty, love, and doubt.

The mirror is the thread that ties the books together.

In Scepter of Fire, the focus shifts to Varna Lund, a young woman mocked for her looks but determined to become a healer and live a life that matters. Her story pulls in soldiers, sorcerers, Gerda, and other returning figures from the first book, while the struggle over the mirror and its power grows wider. The result feels less like a simple sequel and more like another angle on the same troubled world.

These books lean into fairy-tale atmosphere. There is snow, fire, travel, war, magic, enchanted creatures, and romance, but the emotional stakes stay personal. Both Thyra and Varna have to decide what kind of person they want to be when power offers them an easier, harsher path. Gilbert seems especially interested in outsiders, young women under pressure, and the uneasy line between strength and cruelty.

Even though the series is compact, it has a broad feel. You get an invented world, an ongoing magical threat, and protagonists who are connected without being copies of each other. The books draw on Andersen-style fairy-tale elements, but they read as full adventures rather than simple retellings. If you like fantasy with a wintry edge, character-driven conflict, and a strong magical through line, this is the branch of Gilbert's work that shows how comfortably she moves outside cozy mystery.

It is a small series, but it opens onto a much bigger world.