"Up in Molten Lights" doesn’t just raise the stakes, it sets them on fire.
From the first page, this sequel slams the gas pedal and never lets up. If Behind the Crimson Curtain was a slow, seductive waltz through shadows and secrets, Molten Lights is an all-out sprint through a minefield. Explosive, fearless, and emotionally gutting, this book will claw into your chest and refuse to let go until the very last word.
The world is darker now, more dangerous. The president’s twisted vision for the regime morphs into full-blown tyranny, and Golden paints this unraveling with vivid, terrifying precision. Every scene crackles with danger, you can practically smell the smoke and fear in the air. It's suffocating in the best way.
And Firin, oh, Firin. She’s still wearing masks like armor, still walking the knife’s edge between survival and rebellion. Her internal war is just as gripping as the physical one outside. Watching her balance of love, duty, deception, and identity is like watching a storm try to hold itself together. And at the center of it all is him, the man she loves, the one she can’t tell the truth to. The tension between them is off the charts: intimate, heartbreaking, and charged with all the things they wish they could say but can’t.
Golden doesn’t just twist the plot, she detonates it. Just when you think you know where it’s going, the ground crumbles. Allegiances flip, secrets bleed into daylight, and every uncovered truth feels like a slap. Nothing is safe. No one is safe. And as a reader, you’re caught in that glorious chaos, flipping pages like your life depends on it.
Where Crimson Curtain was a lyrical descent into a broken world, Molten Lights is its violent reckoning. It’s bold. It’s brutal. It’s brilliant. This is the kind of finale that burns, in your memory, in your heart, in every place you didn’t expect to feel it.
Prepare to be wrecked, and to love every second of it.

Up in Molten Lights by E.B. Golden

I received this book as an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Up in Molten Lights catapults readers straight into the fire—trading the slow-burn atmosphere of Behind the Crimson Curtain for breakneck pacing, high-stakes twists, and relentless tension that doesn’t let up until the final page.

In this explosive second installment, the corrupt regime tightens its grip with chilling cruelty, as the president’s monstrous vision elevates the stakes to terrifying new heights.

At the heart of it all is Firin who is still a master of masks, still playing a dangerous game. She fights for her people from within, concealing her true identity even from the man she loves. The emotional tension between them is electric—layered with longing, sacrifice, and the weight of all that must be hidden to survive and succeed.

Golden delivers a tightly plotted, twist-laden narrative where nothing is ever as it seems.

Loyalties shift, secrets unravel, and each revelation hits harder than the last.

Where Crimson Curtain was hauntingly beautiful, Molten Lights is ferocious and unflinching. It is a gripping finale that leaves scorch marks in its wake.

Even though I started this without reading the first book, I still enjoyed it! I find the story very interesting. Characters are well-developed. The writing style was very engaging. Overall, it was a good book.

Maybe seeking control, especially of those you loved, was just a prison of its own kind. By using those around me, I only had more to be ashamed of than ever before — and this time I couldn't blame Father or the Stav. I couldn't even blame Hulei.

I loved this twisty, sensual, romantic fantasy novel. It’s a bit like adult Grishaverse by Leigh Bardugo meets Beyond the Ruby Veil by Mara Fitzgerald. I finished book one, Behind the Crimson Curtain, the same day I started reading Up in Molten Lights, and it was a really satisfying conclusion to the duology. I read on the author's blog that the series would be a duology, but I would really enjoy reading something else in the world of this series, as I feel like there is so much more to explore. Maybe Suri's story? She's a very interesting side character, so many of the side characters are compelling.

There was a bit of a dark romance in the love triangle in this book. I'm usually not a fan of cliffhangers, love triangles, or final-act new POV switches, so it says a lot that I still enjoyed this book and the first in the series so much. I expected to be very frustrated when I saw that Chapter Seventy-Five out of 79 chapters was from Ruanti's POV, since I usually don't like new POVs being added so late into the book, but it worked out surprisingly well. I would say give the novel a chance, even if you see that in the table of contents and are frustrated. I wasn't surprised by all of the twists in the novel, but they were still very fun.

I know a lot of people were surprised that theater managed to be combined so well with revolutionaries in this series, but I don't think it's surprising at all. Art has always been provocative and political, and theater is a very "in your face" form of art, so it makes sense that an underground theater troupe would become involved with the revolutionaries. There's also a nice amount of nonbinary representation (two characters) and sapphic representation (two characters) in this book, which seems realistic with how many LGBTQIA+ people are drawn to theater as a form of self-expression. I was not surprised by the characters who turned out to be sapphic and in love with each other — I actually thought in the first book that they probably were former lovers. I'm happy I'm right and it was not just me reading the book with lesbian googles!

I don't really understand Firin saying that she's as bad as Hulei (who traffics and tortures children), but I honestly also wonder if that's part of her "unreliable narrator" charm. Maybe she doesn't actually believe she's as bad as all that, and is just performing guilt for the reader. She's a very compelling unreliable narrator, and the plot twists in conjunction with her having that role in the book are interestingly done.

I would love to see more of what happens in the world of this series after the ending. There's so much promise in this universe, and for seeing what the rebuilding is like.