Meet Willow and Reig (and The Colony that made them) - Candice Gilmer Books

Meet Willow and Reig (and The Colony that made them)

Candice Gilmer

Every book in this series starts with a person I can’t stop thinking about. Book Three started with two.

Willow: the warmth that won’t quit

Willow has been at The Colony for eleven months, and in that time she has signed up half the station for her clothing campaign, learned everyone’s coffee order, and never once had a bad day in public.

That last part should worry you.

Here’s the thing about Willow: the sunshine is real, but it’s also armor. When she was a child, a Novian saved her life during the Nova Wars — and she decided, in the way kids decide things that shape their whole lives, that she was going to be someone worth saving. So she shows up. Every day. For everyone. She’s warm without being soft, she reads a room in half a second, and she is tired underneath it in a way nobody has ever bothered to notice.

Reig: blunt is not the same as unkind

Reig is a Formorian, which means he is massive, he is powerful, and he has never in his life softened a sentence for anyone’s comfort. Formorians say exactly what they see, exactly when they see it. No pleasantries. No sarcasm. No cushion.

If you met him in Beast Unbound, you already know: this is a male who demanded his commendation in writing and carried a grown man off a ship like complicated luggage.

Reig has spent his whole life being misjudged as cruel because he’s honest. So when he sees Willow running a year-long campaign against a rule that doesn’t exist, he doesn’t flatter her. He reads the bylaws and takes the whole thing apart. And when he notices the exhaustion behind her smile? He doesn’t pretend it’s not there. He asks if she’s okay.

Reader, she does not know what to do with that.

The Colony: my favorite character I never talk about

The Colony isn’t just where these books happen — it shapes everyone in them. Twenty-some thousand humans and Novians, four years after a war, sharing one closed station and trying to prove coexistence can actually work. Everyone’s on a contract. Everyone gave something up to be there. The small spaces — the café tables in The Commons, the noticeboards, Morrigan’s shop — are where the real life of the place happens.

And in this book, that shared life gets tested. Because when Willow’s campaign finally wins, the door she opened lets something ugly through — and someone off-world is very quietly making sure it burns.

Why I think you’ll love them

Willow and Reig aren’t teacher and student. Neither one fixes the other. She doesn’t know how to be truly known; he doesn’t know how to want something for himself. They figure it out side by side — which is my favorite kind of romance, and I hope it becomes yours too.

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