Dickinson has written three fantasy novels, The Cup of the World (2004), The Widow and the King (2005) and The Fatal Child (2008), which are primarily for young adults.
The Cup of the World and its sequels follow a young woman, Phaedra, and subsequently her son, Ambrose, as they come to understand the forces of sin and retribution that have afflicted a small medieval kingdom since its founding.
Amanda Craig wrote in The Times[4] that The Cup of the World and The Widow and the King were "The strangest novels I’ve come across since William Morris’s fairytales."
It tells the story of a former republican activist, Michel Wéry, who has become disillusioned by the atrocities of the French Revolution and has become a spy for the aristocratic regime of a small German state.
[5] Philip Ardagh, reviewing the book for The Guardian, described the setting as "totally convincing and claustrophic" and that "...it is to Dickinson's credit that intellectual argument and internal conflict have been used to create such a strong driving force.