Exquisite and esoteric, this literary horror story will confound many readers but may reward those who persevere.
A striking tale of supernatural haunting, healing, and revenge.
In sanity-shattering mourning for her lost Baby, Zulmira, a gifted healer and disciple of the shamanic god Oni, sets off a string of strange events with her arrival in the 17th-century settlement of Gethsemane Cape Verde. Four centuries and a continent away, Therese is building a diverse crew of Oni Kin in contemporary London. Despite the distance, Zulmira and Therese share powerful connections. As shamanic disciples of the omnipotent Oni, the women interact with the spirit world. They see things and know things that defy everyday reality and terrify the average human. While Zulmira’s new neighbors welcome her service, they’re wary of this willful woman who appears from nowhere and has no man to answer to. The skepticism is amplified as she moves in with and takes care of a respected local fisherman, Domingos; his ailing wife, Marguerite; and their daughter, Sueli, in exchange for room and board. Though she seems to help, it’s increasingly clear that Zulmira is hiding something, and suddenly people are disappearing or turning up dead. Her evolution is fascinating to watch unfold. While Zulmira is propelled by grief and jealousy, Therese’s motivations are less clear. She and her housemates spend their time trying to “move through dimensions” by ingesting peyote and a mysterious and grotesque psychedelic fruit. Eventually, Zulmira’s and Therese’s worlds bleed into each other, but that shattering of planes is the least interesting part of both tales. The greatest contribution of the contemporary stories is how they show off the fantastical consequences of Oni’s powers and how the events of Zulmira’s time reverberate. Adding difficulty to an already byzantine dual timeline balancing religious mythologies and universal themes of love and survival, the writing alternates between finely poetic and so thick with obscure metaphor and symbol that the story becomes confusingly opaque.
Exquisite and esoteric, this literary horror story will confound many readers but may reward those who persevere.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781593767846
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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