2026
WISE Score
Amazon
A brutal, beautiful, and terrifying medieval road trip where the Black Death is actually the least of your worries.
4.6
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Between Two Fires is basically 'The Last of Us' meets 'The Exorcist' in the middle of the 1300s. It is a phenomenal book—arguably one of the best horror-fantasies of the last decade—but it is absolutely not for your middle schooler.
For parents who like dark, atmospheric historical fiction or 'prestige horror,' this is a 10/10 must-read. Just make sure you keep it on a high shelf so the kids don't accidentally open it to the page with the giant monster made of human parts.
18+. Seriously, this is for adults. It’s a brilliant piece of literature, but it’s high-octane horror that will give most kids (and some adults) nightmares for a week.
While there is a core story of redemption and a protective bond between a disgraced knight and an orphan, the 'wholesome' elements are buried under a mountain of medieval depravity, plague, and literal hell on earth.
Buehlman's vision of a three-way war between Heaven, Hell, and humanity during the Black Death is incredibly vivid, lyrical, and unlike anything else in the genre.
This is a hard-R horror novel. It contains graphic violence, disturbing religious imagery, gore, and a pervasive sense of dread that would be traumatizing for a child.
It offers deep theological exploration and a visceral (if horrific) look at historical life during the 1348 plague. It's a masterclass in atmosphere and character growth.
While this book has been making the rounds on BookTok, don't let the "trending" status fool you into thinking it’s a breezy YA fantasy. Christopher Buehlman has written something much closer to a fever dream. It’s a 14th-century road trip through a France that is literally rotting, and while the 4.6 Amazon rating is impressive, it’s worth noting that readers are cheering for a story that is frequently revolting.
If you’re a fan of the "grumpy protector" dynamic seen in The Last of Us or Logan, you’ll recognize the bones of this story immediately. Thomas is the disgraced knight, and the girl is the mysterious package he’s escorting. But where those stories use zombies or mutants, Between Two Fires uses the literal apocalypse.
Most horror books rely on ghosts or slashers. Buehlman goes for something much more unsettling: biblical surrealism. We’re talking about monsters that feel like they crawled out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. The scares aren't just about things jumping out of the dark; they’re about the wrongness of the world.
The 1348 setting is rendered with a grime you can practically smell. This isn't the "Ren Faire" version of the Middle Ages. It’s a world of mud, starvation, and the Black Death, where the line between a miracle and a curse is razor-thin. The new deluxe edition from Tor Nightfire includes a foreword by Joe Hill, which makes sense—Hill knows a thing or two about blending high-concept dread with characters you actually care about.
The reason we’re flagging this as 18+ isn’t just the gore, though there is plenty of it. It’s the theological weight. The book asks some heavy questions about whether a silent God is a cruel one, and it explores the corruption of the church in a way that requires a certain level of maturity to process.
For an adult reader, the payoff is a deeply moving story about redemption. Thomas is a "bad" man trying to do one good thing before the world ends. Watching that play out against a backdrop of fallen angels and knightly combat is incredibly satisfying. If you want a book that makes you feel like you’ve actually traveled to a different, much scarier century, this is the one.
If you liked the gritty, "monster of the week" feel of the earlier Witcher stories but wished they were more grounded in actual history and religious dread, this will be your new favorite book. It also hits similar notes to The Road by Cormac McCarthy—it’s a story about keeping a spark of humanity alive when everything else has already burned. Just keep it on your own nightstand. This isn't a "read-aloud before bed" situation unless you want to pay for a lot of therapy later.
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