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The Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean

Each generation, a competition is held to find the next empress of Honoku. The rules are simple. Survive the palace's enchanted seasonal rooms. Conquer Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Marry the prince. All are eligible to compete--all except yokai, supernatural monsters and spirits whom the human emperor is determined to enslave and destroy. Mari has spent a lifetime training to become empress. Winning should be easy. And it would be, if she weren't hiding a dangerous secret. Mari is a yokai with the ability to transform into a terrifying monster. If discovered, her life will be forfeit. As she struggles to keep her true identity hidden, Mari's fate collides with that of Taro, the prince who has no desire to inherit the imperial throne, and Akira, a half-human, half-yokai outcast. Torn between duty and love, loyalty and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness, the choices of Mari, Taro, and Akira will decide the fate of Honoku in this beautifully written, edge-of-your-seat YA...
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Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, #5)

Come Tumbling Down carries our adventurers through death, darkness, and drowning, reckoning with a legacy of blood and lightning. Sometimes being a hero means coming to terms with what it means to be a monster. 

I don't know if this is the darkest book so far, but I think it's the bleakest (in a very good way). It feels like the characters are going to the depths of something and while they'll probably come back, it feels just uncertain enough to be worrying, and no matter what they'll be changed. There are limits to what can happen to the kids in this series, but death is absolutely on the table (and some of them have died previously). We're told that the Moors run on lightning but I wonder if Jillian would say they run on blood.  

Doing a quick check-in on how this works as a sequel in a long-running series: It wraps up some major things left hanging from the previous books, looking like it closed off a big arc (in a very satisfying way). It has a complete story that begins and ends just within this volume in a way that would be understandable if you haven't read any of the other books in the series. This has a feel of a series that's going to be very long and episodic while also carrying some arcs between books, and all of that is carried off very well here. While some major things end here, there's still so much more to explore in these worlds and I'm very excited for more. Finally, there are a lot of different characters and they all have very distinct ways of communicating and thinking about what's happening,  I now have a sense of how several of them would react to different situations. I especially enjoyed Christopher's reaction to the Moors and how they're different from Mariposa. The relationships, whether platonic or romantic, are complex and feel very real. They all feel distinct and it seems like every interaction was used to the utmost to show off more of the children as they try to make things be a little less broken.

CW for dysmorphia, dysphoria, drowning, major character death.

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A wooden double-door stands in the middle of a field, struck by lightning out of a bright blue sky.

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