The Complete Reader's Guide to Delemhach
My indie bookstore owner pressed The House Witch into my hands and said, "oh, you will love this." Three series and ten books later, I understand completely why the community around these books is as passionate as it is.
Delemhach (the pen name of Canadian author Emilie Nikota) started by serializing her work on Royal Road before traditional publication picked it up. That origin matters. These books were written for readers who were already there, already invested, asking questions and coming back for more. The pacing and slow-burn reflects this community. The willingness to spend real time with characters before putting them through things that cost something real reflects that.
The result is a fantasy universe that feels genuinely warm without being shallow, and genuinely funny without undermining its own stakes. It's not the fantasy on the front table at Barnes and Noble, and that's exactly the point.
Here's what you need to know before you start, and how to read all of it in order.
The World
Everything takes place in and around the kingdom of Daxaria, a world where witches and humans coexist with an uneasy awareness of each other, magic carries social weight, and being known for what you are has real consequences. Magic here is systemic. It shapes reputation, identity, and political power in ways that make the conflicts feel grounded rather than episodic.
The Ashowan family sits at the center of the entire universe. Finlay Ashowan is the protagonist of the original trilogy and the gravitational pull of everything that follows. His children, Katarina and Tamlin, each carry their own series forward. Every book in this universe connects. You don't have to read them in a strict order, but reading them in the order below gives you the fullest experience.
Series One: The House Witch Trilogy
The House Witch and the Enchanting of the Hearth (2022) The House Witch and the Charming of Austice (2022) The House Witch and When the Cat Spells War (2023)
This is where the universe begins, and it's still the heart of it. Finlay Ashowan is a house witch, hiding his magic while working as a cook in the royal castle of Daxaria. The kingdom is full of scheming nobles, oblivious royals, and a cat familiar named Kraken who is, as multiple readers have noted, the true center of power in Daxaria. Fin navigates all of it through patience, competence, and a refusal to announce himself in any room he enters.
What makes the trilogy work is the slow accumulation of things. Fin's magic, his relationship with Annika, the political situation in the castle, the way the world gradually comes to understand what it has in him. Book three pulls the whole family into a war, and the emotional weight of that landing depends entirely on everything Delemhach built in books one and two. It lands.
The prose carries the Royal Road serialization marks. Some sentences are rougher than a traditional publishing debut. But the storytelling instincts are sharp, and the warmth is real. This is the book equivalent of a weighted blanket that also has genuine stakes.
If you reach the end of book one and are not interested in Fin, Kraken, and the absurdity of court life in Daxaria, the universe is probably not for you. If you're even remotely enjoying the characters and stakes of this fantasy world, welcome to the party.
Interlude: The Princess of Potential (2023)
Set twenty years after the original trilogy, The Princess of Potential bridges the House Witch world and the Burning Witch series. The protagonist is Princess Alina of Daxaria, who is trying to find a suitable husband while navigating family tension, court intrigue, and a suitor she finds completely intolerable. Fin and Annika are back, and so are their children. Katarina and Tamlin appear here for the first time as significant characters. Kat immediately announces herself. Tamlin remains mysterious in a way that pays off much later in the Ether Witch trilogy.
This one reads younger and lighter than the other books in the universe. A few readers find it thinner than the original trilogy. What it is, functionally, is a handoff, introducing the next generation of characters before they each take a series of their own. For readers planning to go deep into the universe, read it between the House Witch trilogy and The Burning Witch. For readers who fall in love with The Burning Witch and want more context for Kat's family, it also works as a companion read.
Series Two: The Burning Witch Trilogy
The Burning Witch (2023) The Burning Witch 2 (2024) The Burning Witch 3 (2024)
Katarina Ashowan is not her father. Fin is careful, patient, strategic. Kat would rather play cards with questionable people and sneak out to go riding than attend to court life, and her fire witch powers keep growing in directions she can't control. She is Fin's daughter in her competence and her loyalty, and herself in everything else.
The series opens with Kat in Troivack, accompanying Princess Alina as she is crowned queen of a formerly rival kingdom. The first book puts Kat in a court that doesn't know what to do with her, alongside a prince, Eric Reyes, who annoys her intensely. If you know how that particular dynamic resolves, you know. The Burning Witch trilogy is more romantasy-forward than the House Witch trilogy, with a romance that builds across all three books and a slow-burn that is genuinely funny as well as earned. The political stakes get sharper as the series progresses. By book three, Fin himself arrives in Troivack, and watching him navigate his daughter's chaos while his daughter watches him be the legend everyone else sees him as is one of the warmest things Delemhach has written.
The series assumes you know the House Witch trilogy. You'll understand it without that context, but you'll get considerably more out of it if you arrive with Fin already in your bones.
Series Three: The Ether Witch
The Casting Call (2025) Confronting the Crafty Concubine (2025) The Divining of a Devil (2026)
This is Tamlin Ashowan's story, and it's the most tonally different series in the universe. Where Fin is warm and Kat is fire, Tam is controlled. He has spent years concealing exactly what his magic does, even from his own family, and from himself. He is smart, careful, consistently underestimated, and increasingly in over his head in a specific direction. Watching a character as guarded as Tam lose his footing slowly is the kind of reading experience that stays with you.
The tone is closer to high fantasy than the other series. The political situation is more complex. Magic here has systemic social weight in ways the earlier series gestured at but didn't fully develop. The Ether Witch series develops it fully. Being a witch has public consequences. Using magic publicly has consequences. Tam navigates both.
The slow-burn romance across the three books is the best Delemhach has written. It's slow not because external obstacles keep delaying it, but because Tam himself is slow to understand what he feels and why. That's a harder thing to write. It's more satisfying to read. Book two, Confronting the Crafty Concubine, is where the series hits its stride. Book three, The Divining of a Devil, pays off everything that came before it. A rebellion among witch covens, a first witch imprisoned, new alliances, and the romance reaching the point it has been building toward for two books.
You do not need to have read the Princess of Potential to start the Ether Witch trilogy. You do not even strictly need the House Witch trilogy, though Tam's family history adds significant texture. My recommendation: read the House Witch trilogy first. You'll understand why Tam is the way he is, and that understanding makes his arc considerably more moving.
The Reading Order
The full universe, in the order I'd recommend:
Delemhach has also confirmed a fourth trilogy called Kraken Tales, following the cat familiar himself, with the first volume anticipated in 2027. She also has a new series, The Dues and Don'ts of Magic, arriving from Saga Press in October 2026, unrelated to the House Witch universe. The world is expanding.
*Available on Amazon (links above are bookshop.org)
Who Should Read This Universe
Read these books if you want high fantasy where the magic is systemic and the politics are real. If you want slow-burn romance that earns its payoff across a full series. If you are willing to meet an author where she is prose-wise in exchange for storytelling instincts that are genuinely sharp. Skip it if you need pristine sentence-level craft from page one, or if you want romance that moves quickly.
The reader who gets the most out of Delemhach is someone who has been let down by fantasy that moves too fast, resolves too easily, and doesn't spend enough time making you care before it asks you to feel something. That reader will find everything they were looking for here.
If you want to track where you are across all three series and get a recommendation for what to read next when you finish one, Beguiled By Books has a series tracker built for exactly that. It's how I keep track of where I am across multiple ongoing series, and it's what I used to find Delemhach in the first place.
