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A Code of Knights and Deception follows a disillusioned stay-at-home mother, who is unexpectedly thrust into a medieval world after a visit to Warwick Castle. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The seed for this story was planted over a decade ago when I was going through major life changes—navigating motherhood, grappling with identity shifts, and craving a sense of purpose beyond the everyday routines. One day, I found myself imagining a woman standing in a historic castle, feeling invisible and out of place in her own life, when suddenly everything changed. What if she wasn’t just visiting history, but living it?
I’ve always been fascinated by time travel stories like Outlander, but I wanted to explore something different. What would it be like for a modern woman with a scientific, logical mindset to be thrown into the raw, brutal reality of medieval England? Not a fantasy version, but a historically grounded one—with real stakes, real danger, and no magic to save her. I wanted her disorientation to feel authentic, her reactions believable. That meant no corset-loving romanticism, but real struggles: survival, powerlessness, the aching separation from her child, and the weight of being a woman in a society that barely saw her as a person.
Warwick Castle was the perfect setting. I spent time researching its layout, history, and the de Beauchamp family, who ruled it during the 1400s. I loved the idea of grounding her journey in an actual place with rich historical detail while weaving in the mystery of how—and why—she ended up there. What unfolds isn’t just a survival story, but a deep personal reckoning with identity, freedom, and desire.
What were some of the emotional and moral guidelines you followed when developing your characters?
I wanted the characters to feel emotionally raw and morally complex—especially Sophia and Henry. Sophia is thrust into a world where her values and modern sensibilities clash with the brutal, hierarchical system of medieval England. I didn’t want her to be overly idealistic or immediately capable; she reacts with fear, grief, rage, and resilience in believable ways. Her love for her son grounds her, even as her growing connection with Henry threatens to unravel everything she thought she knew about loyalty and love.
With Henry, I had to be especially careful. He’s not a modern man, and I didn’t want to sanitise or romanticise him. But I also didn’t want to make him irredeemable. His morality is shaped by a violent, patriarchal world, and yet he’s quietly resisting it in his own way. His protectiveness, secrets, and inner conflict make him both dangerous and compelling.
Even the secondary characters—like Lizzi or Charles—had to reflect the values of their time while still offering space for nuance. I avoided making anyone purely good or evil. Instead, I focused on motivation, trauma, and the grey areas where love, duty, and survival intersect.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The central theme is identity—what defines it, what threatens it, and what reshapes it. Sophia is a woman who has slowly lost herself to motherhood and societal expectations. Being thrown into the past strips her of all external identifiers—her phone, her career, even her name at times. She’s forced to ask: Who am I without everything I used to rely on?
Another key theme is freedom vs. confinement. From the very beginning, Sophia is caged—emotionally, domestically, and eventually literally. The castle becomes both a place of fascination and a prison. I wanted to show the subtle and overt ways women have been trapped across time—and how reclaiming power, even in small moments, can be a radical act.
Love and moral compromise are also central. Sophia’s growing feelings for Henry don’t erase the reality that she has a husband and son in the future. She constantly wrestles with guilt, desire, and the tension between emotional truth and moral obligation.
Finally, truth and reality play a big role, especially given the sci-fi twist of VR. If your body is in one place, but your heart belongs to another… what’s real? This will become even more important in the second book, where the boundary between memory, identity, and illusion begins to blur.
Where does the story go in the next book and where do you see it going in the future?
Book two will conclude the series and picks up right where A Code of Knights and Deception leaves off—with Sophia facing the fallout of a devastating cliffhanger. Without giving too much away, she’ll be forced to make an impossible choice: stay in her world—or fight for a place in one that was never meant for her. Ethan’s secrets unravel, and Sophia must reckon with the real consequences of the technology that brought her there. Will she save the people who did her wrong?
The next book will delve deeper into the question: What is real? Memory, consciousness, emotion? If those things can be simulated, what does that mean for love—and for truth?
Expect more swordplay, political tension, emotional turmoil, and steamy scenes that test both characters’ limits.
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When Sophia wakes up in 15th-century England, she expects hardship—but nothing prepares her for this brutal, unforgiving world. Lost, alone, and desperate to return to her husband and son, she vows to find a way home. But as weeks pass, Sophia finds kinship and purpose in this strange land.
After a violent attack, she takes fate into her own hands, disguising herself as a man to train under Henry, the castle’s enigmatic master-at-arms. As steel clashes and their connection deepens, forbidden desire ignites.
Yet Henry is not the knight he claims to be. His real name is Ethan, and this is the least of the lies he tells her. Falling for Sophia was never part of the plan—but the closer they become, the more he realises how wrong it is to keep her in the dark.
As danger closes in and the lines between reality and deception blur, Sophia must uncover the truth about Henry—and herself—before she runs out of time.
Outlander meets Black Mirror in this sizzling dark Historical Romantasy with time travel, forbidden love, found family, a morally grey knight, and a fierce heroine—both hiding secret identities, deceiving each other in a game of survival and passion.
*Warning: strong language, steamy scenes, and graphic violence inside. Mention/Description of, but not limited to, abduction, blood, death, amputation, childbirth, death, sexual assault, suicide, violence against children, rape, and torture.*
The book is the first in a duology and ends with a cliffhanger.
A Code of Knights and Deception
Eliza Hampstead’s A Code of Knights and Deception blends time-slip historical fiction with a tense psychological journey, following Sophia, a disillusioned stay-at-home mother, as she is unexpectedly thrust into a medieval world after a visit to Warwick Castle. What begins as a simple solo trip soon turns into a bizarre and haunting experience where reality blurs, complete with knights, castles, and a creeping sense that something is terribly off. Her struggle to reconcile what’s happening with her rational mind propels a tense narrative that shifts between mystery, survival, and self-discovery.
The writing really grabbed me. Hampstead has this uncanny knack for showing claustrophobia and vulnerability without overexplaining. Sophia’s internal monologue is raw, honest, often sarcastic, and sometimes heartbreaking. I felt her fear, her desperation. That choking scene in the peasant’s hut was absolutely harrowing. The author doesn’t pull punches when describing the violence or emotional exhaustion Sophia endures. At the same time, the prose can be beautiful, too. There are moments, especially in descriptions of the castle or Sophia’s fleeting hopes, that feel like small sighs in the middle of a storm. The whole book keeps you off-balance, and I couldn’t stop flipping pages, needing to know if she’d wake up from the nightmare, or if it was never a dream at all.
This book isn’t just a thriller dressed up in chainmail. It’s a sharp look at what it means to feel powerless in your own life. Sophia’s journey through the medieval setting reflects her internal crisis: a woman smothered by expectations, by an unhappy marriage, by invisibility. There’s a quiet rage beneath it all, and it builds beautifully. Her yearning for independence is so relatable, and that makes her trauma hit harder. The story also plays with genre expectations in clever ways. You’re never quite sure if this is a psychological break, time travel, or some elaborate trap. That ambiguity made it addictive and unsettling.
A Code of Knights and Deception left me breathless and unnerved but in the best way. I’d recommend this book to fans of Outlander who like their history with more grit and less romance, or anyone who appreciates a layered, emotional, psychological mystery with a medieval twist. If you’re looking for a story that makes you feel disoriented, a little scared, and totally invested, then this one’s for you.
Pages: 542 | ASIN : B0D6VGNQ41
LITERARY TITAN 