Spotlight & Giveaway: Soulgazer by Maggie Rapier

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Maggie Rapier to HJ!

Hi Maggie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Soulgazer!

Thank you for having me!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

On the eve of her wedding, Saoirse runs away with a silver-tongued pirate who promises he can get rid of her deadly magic if she uses it to help him find a lost isle of myth first. Theirs is a swashbuckling marriage of convenience set on a series of magical islands against a ticking clock as her spurned bridegroom hunts them down.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“We were just a story, remember?”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

Do you remember when sea shanties dominated the internet for a month about five years ago? Because I do. They were the soundtrack to my journal as I first sketched out the ideas for this book! I already had a few pieces (mostly vibes), and a whole lot of yearning, but the shanties brought in the fun! They also reminded me to go watch some childhood favorites, including Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Pirates of the Caribbean, which each added their own flavor to the mix. Toss in the lore of Gráinne Ní Mháille (Grace O’Malley) and the Tiktok-famous rendition of “My Mother Told Me” sung by Nati Dreddd, and you got Soulgazer!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

I cheated this one a little bit, because from the very first chapter Faolan (my Hero) is looking for “the girl with ocean eyes.” And Saoirse (my Heroine) has magic that manifests physically in the way her eyes shift from blue to green to brown to gray, like the sea. But then I thought that might be too easy, so in the text Faolan spots Saoirse in the crowd because she’s dressed like a magpie when no one else is! And magpies are kind of a thing (you’ll see in the book).

As for Saoirse, she’s heard legends of Faolan since she was a young teen and he was just getting started in his adventuring. Faolan is a bit of a rockstar in this world, his legends wildly popular, his stories something that kept Saoirse company for years while she was alone. So going into meeting him, she of course thinks he’s hot and charming, but is determined not to believe any of it because after all: he’s just a story. Right?

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

All three! I blushed my way through writing the consummation of their marriage, not only because of the nature of the scene, but also the fact it would be my first time having someone read a sex scene I’d written (outside of fanfic, which will always remain anonymous). I cried during our final developmental edits as I added a bit more emotional weight to the climax, and the line quoted above, “We were just a story, remember?” It always felt very splashy without that soft, resonant “oh” and adding this line and about a page extra really gave it that extra oomph! And I laughed my way through most of Saoirse and Faolan’s banter and fights, but most especially one after he wakes up from a fever, and they argue over whether he gets to keep a scarf she’s been knitting for him or not after he insults it! See the snippet below.

“Stop that.”
My command lacks bite.
Faolan’s smile returns, ripe and infuriating across his face. “Stop what?” He leans against the pillows, draping the scarf over his chest. “I thought you vowed to obey, wife.”
It’s that word that draws me back across the room, flushed and furious as I reach for the scarf.
“Stop pretending like this is anything more than it is! I think—” Breathe. “I think you use that same growling tone to charm every woman from every island. And I think you’re still delirious from fever, and—I just can’t do it, all right? For three days, I believed you were going to die, and— Let go of it, would you?”
I tug on the scarf, but his grip tightens. Before I can blink, he holds it high over his head in such a childish move that my panic all but vanishes, a candle blown out. “No. You said it’s mine.”
“I did not, I— Give it back, all right? This is so— Faolan!” I reach for it, but when he shifts away at the last second, my attempt turns into a mad swipe.
“It’s soft, and I like it. It’ll be a reminder of my wife’s affection to wear for all my days and—oi!”
I reach too far and tumble headfirst onto the bed.

Readers should read this book….

If they love Howl and Sophie’s dynamic from Howl’s Moving Castle, pirates and runaway brides, sweeping adventure and deep, yearning slow burn romance, forced proximity and found family (hello to the crew). My voice is lyrical and leans literary in the commercial space, but if you love Shelby Mahurin, Roshani Chokshi, Naomi Novik, or Ava Reid, I think you’re in the right place!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m currently working on Soulgazer’s sequel, which is as-yet unnamed but should publish summer of 2026! And after that, my hope is to dive deep into fairy tales—but I have a few more adventures on the backburner just in case!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One copy of SOULGAZER for a US only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you lived on a mythical island, what would you want the magic to be? Fruit that once eaten restores you to full health? A bird whose feathers would render your steps silent? A well that grants wishes, or a tool that never breaks?

 
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Excerpt from Soulgazer:

SOULGAZER by Maggie Rapier
Ace Trade Original | July 8, 2025
Excerpt

Through a haze of salt spray and smoke, the queen lifts a bronze carnyx to the sky. Said to be sculpted by Odhrán, god of her isle, the stag-shaped trumpet produces a sound like I’ve never heard-half keening, half cry. It weaves between our bodies like a clever spider’s web, coaxing us closer until waves become ripples, then nothing but foam and dry pebbles underfoot.

A final note splits the air, like a breakage of time itself.

And then the Damhsa Babhdóir begins.

Silver coins sewn like scales glitter on the back of one lad as he hooks the waist of a crane, sending her crown of sweet-gale blooms flying. It’s caught by a girl masked in raven feathers, inky black silk cut across her bare shoulder blades where true wings would be. She twists into the arms of a fawn with white-speckled shoulders, anointing her with the flowers as I jerk clear of their path.

I do not belong to this menagerie. I never had the chance to.

Heat lashes my skin as I stumble farther onto shore, away from the writhing bodies and wild laughter. They’ve all done this before, somehow-I’m certain of it. Dancing round the Yule fires, gathering at harvest with the rest of their clans. Three girls wind around one another like a braid, while beyond them, men clatter together like boulders with the strength of their embrace.

My throat runs dry to see how easily they all touch, loose limbs outlined in a hazy golden glow.

“Och, would you look where you’re going, lass?”

A weathered hand snatches my skirts just as I stumble back from a fire’s edge, one of a dozen scattered across the beach.

“I’m so sorry! I-”

But the woman’s already lost interest. She stands among a patchwork of elegant figures with lined faces and silver crowns woven of their own braids. Each of them, from the tallest man to the shortest woman, bears the hands of Clodagh tattooed across their collarbone: the markings of the seanchaí.

I nearly cry with relief.

Seanchaí are storytellers, trained from childhood to guard our histories and keep our laws. Above family ties, friendship, payment, or blood, it is their sworn duty to witness our world and reflect what we’ve become.

They might also be my only chance of surviving tonight.

I shuffle closer and try not to think about how my brothers would tease me if they saw this feeble attempt to get by-but Aidan and Conal never had to undertake a Damhsa alone. Da prepared them to face suitors drunk on power and possibility, willing to do anything to wed a true child of the Daonnaí. His pride cloaked their shoulders; mine still ache with the force of his grip.

“Listen to that lot,” the first seanchaí says, her spine notched and jagged beneath the line of her dress. “Carrying on as though it’s something to be proud of, breaking the natural order of things. No mention of what came after-or what the slaughter cost.”

“Aye, because that’s what’s on everyone’s mind tonight. The consequences of death.”

I curl my toes into the ground as they cackle, digging my nails into my thighs.

Death will be a kindness if you make a fool of me, Saoirse.

My father’s final blessing, after he unlocked my cell door-careful never to touch my skin. Even after seven years of exile, with the amulet secured at my throat, he won’t risk the magic. Not when any small intimacy could allow it in.

Maybe that’s why he’s never been soft.

You will join the others until I find you, and for star’s sake, don’t look anyone in the eye. They believe you simple, sent away to heal your fractured mind. You’ll earn your place with silence, and, gods willing, we’ll put an end to this before the night is done.

I didn’t dare ask what he meant by those words, or how I could please him by offering nothing. But if I could talk to the seanchaí . . . my shoulders ease at the mere thought.

I’ll just ask for a name. Someone who might want my title or Father’s resources-who’d be content to forget me as soon as we wed. Someone who could balance the scales of what I’ve cost.

Someone I could survive.

Perhaps then I’d earn Da’s ambivalence in the place of his outright contempt.

I reach the circle’s edge. “Blessed seanchaí?” My voice falters, catching on the wind. “I beg you to h-”

“All the magic in this world is meaningless, so long as we cannot pass on to the next.” The oldest seanchaí’s veins stretch in purple streaks from one knuckle to the next as he sweeps his hand through the air, narrowly missing my head. I flinch back. “For two hundred years, the dead have choked our lands-thousands upon thousands of souls left to rot. And for what? For those six eejits to preen each other’s feathers and polish their pretty crowns?”

“Be fair,” another seanchaí says, her hair more copper than silver like the rest. She looks not at the first speaker but beyond, where a cluster of men gather around a single point. Their voices tumble over one another, competing with the music and the elderly storytellers both.

The younger seanchaí raises her voice, a scowl lining her lips. “Ríona Kiara’s half-decent at least. I heard she’s called for another quest, only this time her cousin is joining.”

A scoff. “What, the pup who calls himself a wolf?”

“Aye.” The copper-haired seanchaí’s words take on an edge. “They say he’s never once failed to find what he seeks. And if rumors are true, he’s looking for a girl here who can lead him to the lost isle. A girl with-”

“Ocean eyes!”

I whirl away from the seanchaí as though someone’s caught hold of my wrist, tugged along by the solitary, fierce thread of that voice. It emerges from the thicket of bodies clustered around the fire nearby, the lines of it blurring the more people join, until suddenly, one figure breaks free from the rest-a man.

No.

A wolf.

He stands half a head taller than me, bare above the waist and painted with streaks of mahogany, umber, and ash. Wayward curls sweep his shoulders, as ruddy brown as an evergreen’s bark stripped at the height of spring. When he raises his arms, the air grows thick around him-tinged violet with the essence of twilight and smoke.

And he’s wearing a tail.

None of those gathered see the absurdity, their eyes transfixed by the legend walking the earth. But I cannot look away from that ridiculous length of fur-lined cloth, sewn by a shoddy hand into the back of his trousers so it sways with every quicksilver step.

“She’ll be something special, this girl. Excellent with her stitching, or a damned good fighter. Blue-eyed, green? Hell, sometimes the sea is pure silver as it was three winters past!”

A roar of laughter breaks out over a story of the Wolf’s exploits I’ve yet to hear-the sort that used to set my heart to flying.

It sours my stomach instead. Aidan hasn’t shared a tale with me in seven years.

I start to turn toward the seanchaí again, but I cannot stop watching that pitiful tail. The Wolf of the Wild is a creature belonging to my brothers’ stories and my own dreams-ones where sirens can be seduced and shipwrecks survived by cunning and skill. He’s a pirate. A myth.

And yet somehow, impossibly . . . just a man.

“The point being, lads, she’s here. I feel it in my gut.” The Wolf drops his fist, and I swear I feel an echoing tap against my ribs. “And with my cousin’s blessing, I’ll take her to sea, where that damned island can’t play coy any longer.”

I stumble back a step. Another. When did I draw so close?

Gooseflesh erupts across my arms as the Wolf twists slightly, until firelight blazes across his profile. Beautiful lips tugged back into a dangerous smile. I retreat as close into the shadows as I can-but I’m not fast enough to avoid them, the legends I once collected like plump berries off a vine.

“Together, we’ll find the Isle of Lost Souls!”

I close my eyes. Breathe in the crowd’s violent swell of hope. Breathe out the beautiful lie.

It does not exist.

Still, my body remembers praying for the island, lungs burning with the need to push forth a song. I would plead daily for the god-forged utopia to return, begging until my knees bled for the chance to touch its healing waters, said to cure soul wounds, break curses, and even release the dead.

Excerpted from Soulgazer by Maggie Rapier Copyright © 2025 by Maggie Rapier. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Every legend has a beginning.

With their freedom on the line, a young woman and a rakish pirate take their fate into their own hands as they attempt to find a lost mythical isle with the power to save their entire world.

Saoirse yearns to be powerless. Cursed from childhood with a volatile magic, she’s managed to imprison it within, living under constant terror that one day it will break free. And it does, changing everything.

Horrified at her loss of control, Saoirse’s parents offer her hand to the cold and ruthless Stone King. Knowing she’ll never survive such a cruel man, Saoirse realizes there is only one path forward…she must break her curse.

On the eve of her wedding, Saoirse seeks out the legendary Wolf of the Wild—Faolan, a feral, silver-tongued pirate. He swears to help rid her of the deadly magic, if she’ll use it to locate a lost mythical isle first. Crafted by the slaughtered gods, it’s the only land that could absorb her power.

But Saoirse knows better than to trust a pirate’s word. With the wrath of her disgraced father and scorned betrothed chasing them, Saoirse adds one last condition to protect herself: if Faolan wants her on his ship, he’ll have to marry her first.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Born in the South with a healthy streak of wanderlust, Maggie Rapier is an incurable romantic who loves nothing more than wordplay and witchcraft—except, perhaps, her sourdough starter. When she’s not marketing French antiques or writing about moody girls and sexy pirates, you can find her wandering in the woods with a basket in hand.
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