KAMILAH COLE’s This Ends in Embers is the heart-pounding conclusion to the ‘Divine Traitors’ duology and is a Jamaican-inspired fantasy that follows a gods-blessed heroine who’s forced to choose between saving her sister or protecting her homeland. We caught up with Kamilah to talk about her latest novel.
This Ends in Embers is the sequel to So Let Them Burn. What can you tell us about Faron and Elara in this latest instalment?
So Let Them Burn ended on an intense cliffhanger, and This Ends in Embers opens on the fallout from both girls’ choices in the first book. Faron is determined to ensure that all of the sacrifices and mistakes she made won’t be in vain – even if she makes more of them. Meanwhile, in true eldest daughter fashion, Elara is trying so hard to hold everything together and take care of people much older than herself. They’re scared and separated and carrying far too much weight.
This Ends in Embers draws from Jamaican-inspired mythology and culture. Can you discuss how you wove elements of Jamaican traditions into the fantasy world?
When writing the ‘Divine Traitors’ duology, I tried to weave the elements of my culture in as naturally as possible. I was born in Jamaica, I lived there for five years, and I went back almost every other summer since, but being Jamaican isn’t something I perform. It’s something I am, something that informs every part of me.
My novel is the same way. Faron and Elara eat Jamaican food, they reference Jamaican values, their magic system is based on Afro-Caribbean ancestor worship, and, especially in This Ends in Embers, I got to work in something I particularly like about Jamaican/Afro-Caribbean mythology, ‘In Iryan folklore, everything was a fable, an allegory, or a metaphor: Anthropomorphic animals starred in creation myths, ancestral advisors appeared when they were most needed, and duppies and soucouyants acted as warnings to misbehaving children.’
My goal was not to teach anyone anything about Jamaican traditions, but to make their world feel familiar and lived in to anyone who knows anything about Jamaica.
What role do the cultural influences play in the story’s themes and character motivations?
I think Faron and Elara are very, very much Jamaican teenagers, even though they live in a fantasy world. They are independent (walking themselves to and from school, even if they stop for a foot race along the way) as I was when I was a child, but they are also respectful of their elders (wearing the nightgowns their elderly neighbour gave them and being deferential to their parents). Faith is an important part of both of their lives – and manifests in their own ways – and they are both concerned with equality and social justice. Finally, the motto of Jamaica is ‘Out of Many, One People’ and one of the overarching themes of the Divine Traitors duology is everyone from every country coming together to save their world – a very Jamaican thing.
How did you go about creating San Irie? Did you draw from any familiar places?
Oh, absolutely! Pretty much every place we visit in San Irie is based off somewhere I lived in Jamaica. Deadegg is a landlocked version of Old Harbor Bay, where I was raised by my grandmother. Port Sol is Kingston, where my uncle lives and where I spent a lot of my summers. Seaport is based on Montego Bay, where my aunt used to live. Pearl Bay Palace draws heavily from Rose Hall, which I finally got to visit last summer – and so on and so forth. I had to take a lot of liberties with locations and features, because San Irie is NOT Jamaica, just inspired by Jamaica, but whenever I needed to imagine something I would just crack open old photos and videos. Or ask my uncle, haha.
Both Faron and Elara face unimaginable trials in This Ends in Embers. How have their experiences throughout the series shaped their personal growth and understanding of the world around them?
If there’s one thing that Faron and Elara come out of This Ends in Embers learning, it’s that they both need a lot of therapy. But, without spoilers, they both learn that the most important thing they can do in this world is just keep trying. Even if you fail or succeed, even if you mess up or excel, never stop trying to do your best every day.
What has been the most rewarding part of writing This Ends in Embers as the conclusion to the ‘Divine Traitors’ duology?
So far, the most rewarding part has been seeing reader reactions. As authors, we aren’t supposed to look at reviews, but I’ve had friends send me some reviews, and it was a relief to see that, on average, people have been finding this a satisfying end to the story. This Ends in Embers was my first time writing a sequel and, if not for Chelsea Abdullah (author of The Stardust Thief), I don’t know that I would have gotten through it. You want to make sure you’re pushing the story forward and the character arcs forward, but also tying everything up in a way that feels right … I just wasn’t sure how it would be received! I’m so, so happy that those who trusted me enough to check out how the story ends came out of it fulfilled.
After completing the ‘Divine Traitors’ duology, do you have plans to explore more of this world or return to any of the characters? Or is there a new project you’re excited to work on next?
I’ve already told my publisher I am happy to write a sequel about a teenage Aveline if the ‘Divine Traitors’ duology has the sales for that – though I think everyone would be surprised to know it would NOT be about the war this duology revolves around.
But my next young adult novel is coming out in 2026, and it’s another duology that begins with Wicked Endeavors. It’s a romantasy set in a Spanish Renaissance-inspired world (fun fact: Jamaica was colonised by the Spanish before the English, around the time of the Spanish Renaissance!) about a powerless con artist who infiltrates an elite high society of witches during their annual social season to take them down from the inside, only to find her revenge complicated by her feelings for two very different boys.
Before that, in Summer 2025, I have a short story in the Adult romantasy anthology The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic and my adult debut, a dark academia named An Arcane Inheritance, comes out in Fall 2025.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Lauren Banner
Kamilah Cole was a writer and entertainment editor at Bustle for four years, and her nonfiction work has also appeared in Marie Claire and Seventeen. A graduate of New York University, Kamilah lives on the East Coast, where she’s usually playing Kingdom Hearts for the hundredth time, quoting early SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, or crying her way through Zuko’s redemption arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
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