Three Readers’ Favorite Reviewers Call Velinwood Novel ‘Singular’ – No Comparison in Contemporary Fantasy

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- 'Bunny, The Hidden Record: The First Empty Throne' by Her Majesty of Ink and Exit Wounds draws rare convergent praise from three professional reviewers, each citing different architectural strengths -

VANCOUVER, Wash., June 2, 2026 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Velinwood Publishing announced today that “Bunny, The Hidden Record: The First Empty Throne” (ISBN: 979-8950622007), the second novel by Her Majesty of Ink and Exit Wounds (Rebecca Maehlum), has received three five-star reviews from Readers’ Favorite — with each reviewer independently reaching the same conclusion: there is no comparable book currently in publication.

“Hand over heart, I have not come across a book like this ever,” wrote reviewer Jamie Michele. “And that’s a good thing.”

The convergence is unusual. Three reviewers, reading the novel separately, used three different vocabularies — technical craft, emotional architecture, and structural innovation — to arrive at the same verdict.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Reviewer Jamie Michele identified the novel’s technical accomplishment:

“The writing is intelligent and witty, and the mastery of a second-person POV with a first-person narrator — a framed second-person narrative — is no easy feat. But it is done in Bunny, The Hidden Record, and it is done well… Readers who adore surreal literary fiction, haunted courts, and character-centric speculative fiction will enjoy this novel. Very highly recommended.”

Reviewer Makeda Cummings noted the novel’s emotional engineering:

“A fascinating story that flips other fantasy kingdom-building stories on their heads… The character depth is excellent, especially the way the author uses minor, seemingly trivial items to drop big hints about a character’s backstory. I loved how the narrative lets you piece together the emotional history of the family through discarded items, pulling you deeper into the world the characters occupy.”

Reviewer Olga Markova emphasized the novel’s atmospheric and structural achievement:

“This marvelous book is beyond praiseworthy. The irresistible cover featuring cute, defiant Bunny, intriguing chapter titles, and every scene kept me riveted until the very end. I thoroughly enjoyed the achingly bittersweet relics and memories of the Queen and hilarious humor.”

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the wake of the Queen’s withdrawal from the throne, Bunny — Chief Documentarian, Familiar of Vengeance, and the court’s reluctant guide — leads the reader through the locked chambers of Velinwood Court. What he reveals is not a kingdom in ruins but a kingdom in preservation: a war room of strategic records and remembered betrayals, an academy where ants are trained into an intelligence network, an untouched study filled with sealed letters the Queen refused to open. Each room is evidence. Each object is testimony. And Bunny — sarcastic, formal, structurally incapable of looking away — is the one who keeps the record straight.

“Bunny, The Hidden Record” operates on two simultaneous registers: a darkly comic guided tour readable on its surface, and a layered psychological architecture rewarding readers who attend to its depth. The novel deploys a framed second-person narrative — a first-person narrator addressing the reader directly as participant — that reviewers have identified as a sophisticated structural choice rare in contemporary fantasy.

The book is the second standalone novel in the larger Velinwood Court universe: a 23-book interconnected mythology built on chaos theory, strange attractor dynamics, and recurring characters whose meanings deepen across the body of work. It can be read entirely on its own.

As reviewer Olga Markova noted, “It was my first meet-and-greet with the series, and it read perfectly as a standalone.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Maehlum writes under the name Her Majesty of Ink and Exit Wounds. She is the sole architect of the Velinwood Court mythology, an interconnected literary universe spanning 23 published books with more in development, a parallel sequence of 50+ essays on cognitive architecture and AI ethics, and an ongoing visual archive. Her essays have appeared in Creative Loop, ADI Insights and Innovation Collective, Activated Thinker, and Toward AI.

Maehlum spent over a decade in executive operations at a global brand, plus additional years in chief-of-staff and advisory work within the federal regulatory sphere. That background — observing how large institutions hold, lose, and reconstruct information — informs the Velinwood universe’s recurring concern with archives, refusals, and how humans give form to things that resist language.

ABOUT VELINWOOD PUBLISHING

Velinwood Publishing is an independent press founded by Rebecca Maehlum to house the Velinwood Court mythology and related works. The press publishes literary fantasy, essay collections, and visual archive volumes, committed to work that operates at both accessible and architecturally complex registers. Velinwood titles are distributed through IngramSpark, Amazon KDP, Lulu, and direct retail at https://velinwoodcourt.com/.

BOOK DETAILS
Title: “Bunny, The Hidden Record: The First Empty Throne”
Author: Her Majesty of Ink and Exit Wounds (Rebecca Maehlum)
Publisher: Velinwood Publishing
ASIN: B0H1K3SHR2
ISBN: 9798950622007
Format: Paperback, Ebook
Pages: 200
Price: $16.99
Publication Date: May 13, 2026
Available at: Amazon, IngramSpark catalog, and velinwoodcourt.com

MULTIMEDIA:
Image link for media: https://www.Send2Press.com/300dpi/26-0602-s2p-bunnythr-300dpi.webp

Image caption: Cover, “Bunny, The Hidden Record: The First Empty Throne,” available now from Velinwood

NEWS SOURCE: Velinwood Publishing

Keywords: Books and Publishing, literary fantasy, indie publishing, Velinwood, Bunny Hidden Record, Her Majesty Ink Exit Wounds, Readers Favorite, second person narrative, dark comedy fantasy, VANCOUVER, Wash.

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