Circle Trilogy

About the Circle Trilogy series

The Circle Trilogy is Nora Roberts's first full epic-fantasy romance: the goddess Morrigan pulls together six warriors from across time and worlds — a witch, a shapeshifter, a scholar, a vampire hunter, a Scottish sorcerer, and a fierce warrior woman — to fight the vampire lord Lilith before she can bring about the end of the world. Morrigan's Cross opens the war as sorcerer Hoyt Mac Cionaoith travels from twelfth-century Ireland into the present day to assemble the circle, falling for witch Glenna Ward as the team first comes together. Dance of the Gods follows Hoyt's shapeshifting twin brother Cian, a vampire who has fought his own nature for a thousand years, and his fraught romance with scholar and fellow circle member Moira, a young queen-in-waiting. Valley of Silence closes the trilogy as the full circle — now including warrior Blair Murphy and vampire hunter Larkin — marches to the final battle against Lilith, with Blair and Larkin's own romance developing under the weight of the coming war.

Unlike Roberts's other trilogies, this one runs a single unbroken plot across all three books rather than three self-contained mysteries: the six-person circle, the countdown to the final battle, and the fate of the world are all one continuous story told in three parts.

How to read this series

Read in strict publication order — Morrigan's Cross, Dance of the Gods, Valley of Silence — this trilogy is really one continuous novel split into three books, following the same six-person circle of warriors from the moment they're assembled to the final battle against Lilith. There's no self-contained mystery-of-the-book structure here the way there is in most Roberts trilogies; skipping a book means missing chapters of a single ongoing war story, so read start to finish.