While the first book—The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky—is about finding Orman and the power struggle set up between Ainsley and Emmeline, the second book—The In-Between Queens—is about Emmeline and Ainsley gathering their armies to fight each other for the throne. But because the Old Laws only let them stay in Orman for spurts of time, for parts of the book they are dealing with each other and their parents back in our world. They’re rulers of their realms in Orman, but here in our world they still have to do homework and clean up Oreo crumbs they drop on the carpet. It’s funny to watch them try to exist in such different environments.

Everyone thinks the third book is going to be set completely in Orman, but I hope not. I like to imagine the girls somewhere in this world with me—Emmeline running out of toilet paper after she pees and dealing with real stuff alongside me, but slipping back into Orman to take her place as the true queen of the kingdom.

They’re the kind of stories that keep you up late at night, ones I sink into so fully I’m certain they are secret histories of a real world that I just haven’t figured out how to get to. Reading them makes me feel as if I’m putting on a suit of armor over a beloved sweater, fierce and comfortable, nostalgic and adventurous.

And N. E. Endsley is some sort of absurdly young writing prodigy. He’s only a year older than Jenna and me. Social media lit up a few weeks ago on his nineteenth birthday, and a few prominent sites ran articles recapping his improbably glorious success.

He started writing the stories when he was only thirteen and published the first book when he was sixteen, the second book’s publication following a year later. The third and final book of the trilogy was supposed to come out this year, but the release date was pushed back indefinitely.

No one knows why.

There are rumors, though. Some say that he has writer’s block and can’t figure out how to end such an epic story when it’s become so popular. Some go further and accuse the fandom of being the root of the problem, using words like vapid and invasive. Expecting too much, putting too much pressure on Endsley’s creative space.

Others still say he’ll never finish, that he’s become a social recluse before the age of twenty-five and that whatever has caused it, the story will end with the second book.

I hope it’s not true, but I don’t have much to hope on. Nobody does. Endsley rarely grants interviews. What the Orman fandom knows of him comes mostly in trickles and hearsay.