This incomparable science fiction/fantasy book series asks: Would you embrace your true animal nature if it meant losing yourself?

The Cave of the Dark Moon is the sequel to The Iron Labyrinth. The setting for this trilogy is a mysterious subterranean labyrinth made of iron where the protagonist is forced into servitude by his captor, a powerful and enigmatic man who calls himself Uncle. In The Cave of the Dark Moon, Brian Renwick, literary editor, is no longer—now, only Colum remains. After rejecting his previous life and embracing the living iron, he is purified in Uncle’s furnace, a willing servant once more.

But dreams are portals to the darkness within us, and Colum’s dreams pull him deeper than the labyrinth, into a matriarchal society of female shape shifters ruled by a powerful Queen: the “Dark Moon.” In a firelit cave filled with lust, symbolism, and betrayal, Colum must undergo a shocking rebirth to save his forbidden love. But whose memories are bubbling up from the abyss . . . and is the man he once was gone forever?

The Cave of the Dark Moon is the gripping sequel to the dark fantasy novel The Iron Labyrinth, one of the most uniquely spellbinding 2020 debuts of a fantasy book series by a female author. Beckman invites readers to journey even further into the depths. This latest installment of dark magical realism explores what happens when you’re willing to dissolve the boundaries of who you think you are.

Merrilee Beckman earned a BA in religious studies from the University of Iowa. She worked as Assistant Chaplain at the University of Iowa Hospitals, taught in public schools in Iowa and South Dakota, and spent two summers on a lookout tower in Idaho working for the US Forest Service. She later studied the works of Carl Jung, which led her to become a dream analyst and develop her passion for magical realism.