Creative, with a laid-back charm that sometimes borders on sloppiness.
Glassman’s tale celebrates a mother-and-son bond with a touch of fantasy.
It’s difficult parenting an unusual child. Silas doesn’t sleep much, wears a cape with an actual wolf head to school, disappears in the woods for days at a time, and claims his best friends are Golnaar, a giant, and Shjineluft, a wizard. Unlike most kids, Silas muses deeply about subjects such as maturity (“If you surround yourself by the right elements, they all feed off each other”) and death (“The forest tells some of us to thrive and it tells some of us to die”). His caretaker Leigh has difficulty coping with some of his behavior, but their bond is profound; when Silas was a baby, his family’s van hurtled over a bridge, plunging them into the river. Leigh, riding by on a bike, managed to save Silas and his older brother from drowning, and Silas’ eccentric grandma, Dolly Doubloon, then gave him to Leigh, recognizing that she herself wasn’t the right guardian. Silas and Leigh collaborate on a YA graphic novel about his exploits called Wolf Boy & the Doubleback Giant, which unexpectedly becomes a bestseller. Silas’ disappearances from home lengthen, leading to Leigh finally discovering the surprising truth about Golnaar and Shjineluft. Glassman’s book is a mish-mash of many disparate ideas. It explores love—both romantic and between a parent and child—and nonconformity; elements of mysticism are also thrown in, such as the concept of Whulaks, “souls in limbo” who return to Earth through another’s death in order to give help. The writing can feel messy and slapdash—some passages have long confusing sentences and strange word choices (“[Leigh] looked up at him with adornment”), and four characters are given the same problem of alcohol addiction. The casual and folksy voice frequently used to narrate can seem jarring (“Then he really shocked the shit out of her”), but the imaginative reach of the story shines bright.
Creative, with a laid-back charm that sometimes borders on sloppiness.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798990601406
Page Count: 290
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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