Is there an audiobook of To Dance with Death?

Yes. To Dance with Death has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Lauren Fortgang and Marwan Salama.

How long is the To Dance with Death audiobook?

The To Dance with Death audiobook runs 12 hr 53 min.

Is To Dance with Death on Kindle Unlimited?

No. To Dance with Death was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 16, 2026.

To Dance with Death by Brittney Arena book cover for the Book of the Day fantasy book review

Our score

4.1/ 5

Excellent

Listen to To Dance with Death free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDAugust 2026

Genres

Fiction Fantasy Romance Young Adult

Themes

Memory, identity, and what love survives without itThe physical cost of resurrectionPolitical fracture and inherited warChronic pain and enduranceSacrifice as a repeated choice, not one grand gesture

To Dance with Death

Name: To Dance with Death
Price: 14.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Brittney Arena

Brittney Arena

Brittney Arena wraps her fantasy romance duology with To Dance with Death, sending heroine Vasalie into the land of the dead to win back a king who no longer remembers loving her. This young adult fantasy costs out resurrection, memory, and chronic pain as real, physical prices rather than plot dressing, though it rewards readers who started with A Dance of Lies.

The Review

Our take

Vasalie walks into the kingdom of the dead braced for ash and screaming. What she finds instead is a throne room with better table manners than the one she left behind: wine poured by attendants who used to be somebody's grandmother, and a king at the head of the table who looks at her like she owes him money. Anton isn't chained up waiting for rescue. He struck his own bargain with Moranya, goddess of the underworld, and the price wiped out the six weeks he'd spent falling for Vasalie, along with the parts of him that would have minded forgetting her. So this second half of the duology isn't a quest to save a man. It's a courtship run backward, against a king with every reason in his broken memory to hate the woman standing in front of him.

Arena's sharpest worldbuilding move is making memory the literal currency of the underworld, then making Vasalie pay in a coin the genre rarely bothers to cost out on the page: her body. She came back from her own death in book one, and this book never lets her forget it. Long days below leave her joints aching by evening, her hands slow to close around a sword hilt, her stamina rationed like a budget rather than spent freely in a fight scene. The pain reads like logistics, not metaphor, and the story never asks her to be grateful for surviving it.

None of this works without book one, and that's worth saying plainly. A Dance of Lies laid the political groundwork: Vasalie's spy work, Illian's court, the vow that got everyone here. Skip it and you're watching two people renegotiate a relationship you never saw start, with a war back home you have no context for. Arena doesn't pause to summarize the realm before dropping Vasalie into a civil war brewing behind her, and the book trusts you to already know why her father is dangerous and why the crown is splitting apart. Come prepared and you get a political thread that keeps its weight, an underworld whose rules feel load-bearing rather than decorative, and a king who has to be re-won rather than simply reminded.

Why you should read

Underworld fantasy with real stakes attached to magic
Slow-burn romance rebuilt from scratch after memory loss
Chronic pain represented as everyday reality, not metaphor
Duology finales that tie up every thread
Readers who already finished A Dance of Lies

What to expect

Assumes you remember book one's politics going in
Aching, yearning romance more than fast action
An underworld with rules that bite back
Emotional peak saved for the final stretch

By the last stretch, the underworld stops looking like a strange country and starts looking like a home Vasalie has to choose to leave, more than once. The choosing is where the book finds its nerve. There's a moment near the end where Anton finally recognizes her, not because a spell breaks but because he decides to trust a version of events he can't remember, and that decision is the whole duology's argument shrunk to one scene: love as something you keep choosing even when the facts won't back you up. Arena sends her heroine down into death and back with aching knees and a stubborn heart, and the kingdom she rebuilds afterward feels like it cost her something real to build, joints and all.

Reviewed by Rowan · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.1/ 5

Excellent

Listen to To Dance with Death free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of To Dance with Death?: Yes. To Dance with Death has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Lauren Fortgang and Marwan Salama.
Listen to To Dance with Death free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the To Dance with Death audiobook?: The To Dance with Death audiobook runs 12 hr 53 min.
Is To Dance with Death on Kindle Unlimited?: No. To Dance with Death was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 16, 2026.
How much does To Dance with Death cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $14.99, Hardcover $27.03. Prices as of August 26, 2026 at 1:22 AM EDT and may change.

Filed underFantasy Romance Young Adult Browse the archive →

CollectionsHidden Gems Browse collections →

Common questions

What is To Dance with Death about?: Vasalie walks into the kingdom of the dead braced for ash and screaming. What she finds instead is a throne room with better table manners than the one she left behind: wine poured by attendants who used to be somebody's grandmother, and a king at the head of the table who looks at her like she…
Is To Dance with Death worth reading?: We scored To Dance with Death 4.1 out of 5. Brittney Arena wraps her fantasy romance duology with To Dance with Death, sending heroine Vasalie into the land of the dead to win back a king who no longer remembers loving her. This young adult fantasy costs out resurrection, memory, and chronic pain as real, physical prices…