The Poisoned King
core novel 2025 Impossible Creatures
Record
| First published | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.30 (7,651 ratings, collected 2026-10-19) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780593809938 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
When Christopher Forrester is unexpectedly woken by a miniature dragon chewing on his face, his heart leaps for joy: for months he has dreamed of returning to the Archipelago, the secret islands where all the creatures of myth still live, and here is his summons. But he did not know it would involve a rescue mission on the back of a sphinx, or a plan to enter a dragon's lair, for there is a poison spreading in the Archipelago, and the ratatoskas tell of murder. The second book of the Impossible Creatures series, a story of castles, dragons and revenge, brought to life with fifty illustrations by Ashley Mackenzie, including a map and a bestiary of magical creatures.
Where it sits
- Universe: Impossible Creatures
- Series: Impossible Creatures core; position 2 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Katherine Rundell
Notes
- First published by Bloomsbury in the UK in September 2025; the ISBN recorded is Knopf's US edition.
- From the series record (Impossible Creatures): Katherine Rundell's planned five-book fantasy of the Archipelago, where the creatures of myth survive.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Impossible Creatures: position 2 of 3: previous Impossible Creatures (2023) · next The Neverfear (2026)
- Internal chronology, within Impossible Creatures: position 2 of 2: previous Impossible Creatures (2023)
Sources
- Series page on the rating platform (ratings and years with titles)
- Bloomsbury (publisher description, via Toppsta)
- Knopf (publisher description, via MIT Press Bookstore)
- Bloomsbury (publisher description, via Toppsta)
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