A peculiar but often profound piece of metafiction whose emotional landscape offers more riches than its physical one.
What appears to be a typical children’s quest fantasy is more than it seems.
In Seanan McGuire’s Hugo-nominated Middlegame, the early-20th-century alchemist Asphodel Baker uses the pen name A. Deborah Baker to write a series of children’s books concealing coded messages to other radical alchemists. Now McGuire has taken on the Baker pen name and actually written the first book. Tangle-haired, adventurous Zib and obsessively tidy, rule-following Avery both climb over a mysterious wall and find themselves in the Up-and-Under, a dangerous and magical land populated by monsters, Crow Girls, giant talking owls, and other fabulous creatures. Their way home lies along the gleaming, elusive, improbable road to the Impossible City, where the Queen of Wands will surely be able to send them home…if the other kings and queens weren’t so determined to strew obstacles in their way. The plot draws heavily on the tropes of a stock 20th-century children’s fantasy, but the sharp and thoughtful perspective of the narrator transforms the book into a 21st-century commentary on such works. It also puts forth a deeply felt and carefully considered exploration of the foolish myths adults teach the next generation and the unpleasant consequences of parents trying to force their offspring to fit into a mold, with an emphasis on the negative effect on those children’s relationships with their peers. These themes link the book to the author’s Wayward Children portal fantasy series, which touches on similar issues. Middlegame readers searching for hidden alchemical meaning may not find it beyond the obvious naming of the Kings and Queens of the Up-and-Under after court cards in the tarot (often linked to alchemy). Selections from the text included in Middlegame also appear, but the author’s history in that novel doesn’t quite match up with what’s presented here. Middlegame places Baker as a contemporary of L. Frank Baum and her books as commercial and alchemical rivals with Baum’s Oz series. But numerous bits of context and reference within this children’s fantasy (planned suburban communities, a woman working in a street repair crew, playgrounds with slides, etc.) place it considerably later than the dawn of the 20th century. Surely that is a deliberate choice on McGuire’s part, but what does it portend?
A peculiar but often profound piece of metafiction whose emotional landscape offers more riches than its physical one. (Fantasy)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-9927-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
