The Ballad of Falling Dragons by Sarah A. Parker (Harper Voyager £22, 576pp)

Parker is immersive like the Niagara falls are wet – she drowns her gentle readers with words: determination simmers, glances spear, groans drench. It’s a sort of romantastic maelstrom to match the intensity of, well, pretty much everything: sex and violence, dicing and slicing, love and hate...

There’s a muscly story in there as well: Raeve must slaughter her archnemesis Rekk; Kaan, the love and lust object of her life, has kingly issues to deal with; his bastard brother Arkyn, pretender to the throne, has their daughter in chains and to cap it all, the sky, literally, is about to fall.Grittily gorgeous and sizzlingly sexy – dragons are involved.

The Lion and the Deathless Dark by Carissa Broadbent (Bramble £22, 560pp)

Against a backdrop of peril, extensive slaughter and general mayhem, there’s a delightful, banterish will-they-won’t-they relationship between sword-wielding Kyrene and snarky Septimus.

The former is the Vindica Ultis, owner of a magical sword that loves to stick it to vampires; the latter is, unsurprisingly, smooth-talking vampire royalty.

But when the bounty-hunting Kyrene kills a god, the ante is well and truly upped. The power from one dead god then devolves to the next even worse one and the next and so forth.

Then there are the relentlessly murderous shadow-born to deal with, not to mention Septimus’s secret agenda. Fabulous, fluid writing and compelling characters. Bring on the sequel.

Earthbound by Saara El-Arifi (Harper Voyager £18.99, 384pp)

It’s the slow-burn, tense conclusion to the war between the Fae and the Elves: the former besieged in their sheltered fastness of Mosima, the latter fractiously camped out in the Wasted Marsh.

Meanwhile, the elven Lettle and Alder, the last humans in the world, are on a quest of their own: to find out the origin of magical beasts, the mysterious Obeah, and maybe uncover the truth about Alder’s origins.

There’s a lot more to resolve. Lost loves, new lusts, broken promises and mysterious prophecies. And what depths of dastardly behaviour will those elves plumb? Answers are hard won, surprising and, ultimately, deeply satisfying.