An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.
A witch’s persecution of her stepdaughters leaves ample opportunity for dalliances in this fantasy/romance.
Following The Scarlett Mark (2020), this second installment of Lane’s A Reign of Blood and Magic series finds the sorceress Cynara presiding over the Kingdom of Velez, where she’s hated by everyone, including her son, King Lowell. She’s known as The Ebony Queen because of her mainly black wardrobe and blacker heart. Craving more dark power, she meets with the fallen angel Daemonis, who promises to help her with a mega-spell that will precipitate Ragnarök and gifts her immediately with the power to cause storms in distant places. She deploys tempests against the three stepdaughters who have fled to far-flung lands to escape her wrath. Princess Rose gets swept overboard during a storm at sea and is saved by studly pirate Edwin Perrow. Princess Scarlett, happily engaged to Lord Nicolai Graydon, gets engulfed by a sand tornado that only abates when the war god Odin gallops across the sky to her rescue atop his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. Princess Ruby and her handsome guardian Garrett Morris endure the worst ordeal after a snowstorm drives them into a cave that Cynara seals shut with lightning. A dayslong slog through a tunnel takes them to a shallow pool that they have to wade through, leaving them no alternative except to get naked and fall into each other’s arms. Meanwhile, back in Velez, Sister Mary Margaret (who is the princesses’ mother, Regana, in disguise) and the Lord Chancellor take time out from plotting against Cynara to have sex in church. And Cynara takes time out from witchery to fondle the manhood of her stable groom. Lane’s romantic fantasia is a talkfest with dialogue that’s sometimes tart and punchy (“You lie once, I take your tongue. Twice, you lose your arm”) but often overripe (“I’d plunder your lips right now, causing them to swell with desire, and I wouldn’t stop pillaging your lift until my rudder—”) or indecipherable (“The battle cry doesn’t spy her last breath until the soldier accepts his final mark”). Still, Cynara makes a compelling villain—a scene where she ferrets the truth out of Mary Margaret has a chilling ruthlessness—and the otherworldly effects are vivid and well rendered in this energetic tale.
An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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