Origin

About the Origin series

Origin is Jennifer L. Armentrout's return to the world of her Lux series, set four years after Opposition and centered on a new heroine: Evie Dasher, a human teenager whose life gets upended when a raid on an underground club reveals that Luc -- the strange, magnetic guy she barely knows -- isn't a Luxen at all, but something the government considers even more dangerous. The Darkest Star opens the series establishing Luc as an Origin, the engineered offspring of a Luxen and a mutated human, and pulls Evie into a resistance against the same government forces that shaped the original Lux trilogy's conflict.

While it's a direct sequel series to Lux -- Luc himself is a supporting character readers first meet in Opal -- Origin is built to work for readers who haven't read Lux, following a new protagonist's introduction to Armentrout's alien-occupation world rather than continuing Daemon and Katy's story directly. The trilogy escalates from personal danger into a wider conspiracy involving government experimentation and a looming global threat.

Three novels were published between 2018 and 2020; a fourth, The Fevered Winter, was announced but has faced repeated delays and remains unreleased as of mid-2026.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: The Darkest Star, The Burning Shadow, The Brightest Night. The series was written to be accessible to readers new to the Lux universe, following Evie's introduction to Luc and his world rather than requiring you to have read the original Lux series first -- though Lux readers will recognize Luc as a supporting character from Opal and get extra context from having read it. A fourth book, The Fevered Winter, has been announced but delayed multiple times and has no confirmed release date as of mid-2026.