An entertaining romance for sword-and-sorcery fans.
A shape-shifting lord and a princess with snakelike powers battle a witch’s curse—and a potentially fatal attraction—in this debut fairy-tale romance.
Princess Scarlett of Velez and her sisters, Ruby and Rose, feel dispossessed because their younger half brother, Prince Lowell, will inherit the crown and gets all the attention of their father, King Rickard. The bigger problem, though, is their stepmother, Queen Cynara, a wicked sorceress who frames Scarlett for Rickard’s murder-by-cobra-bite. Sentenced to die poetically by another cobra bite, Scarlett survives and gets vaguely serpentine powers from the venom now flowing through her veins; Cynara then banishes her to Drum Manor, home of Lord Nicolai Graydon. Scarlett finds a gloomy, cobwebbed estate presided over by the preternaturally handsome and menacing Nicolai, who has his own history with Cynara: Sixteen years earlier Nicolai dumped her to marry an heiress, and she retaliated by annihilating the heiress with energy bolts and imposing a curse that causes Nicolai to turn into a black panther and tear out the throat of any woman who arouses him. Scarlett and Nicolai circle warily, each posing a sexily lethal threat to the other. Nicolai is indeed aroused by Scarlett, especially when he spies on her while she is undressing in her bedchamber; yet if he succumbs to his panther side and goes for her throat, her venomous blood will poison him. But Nicolai’s butler says that Scarlett may be able to lift Nicolai’s curse if she can cage him and teach him the meaning of true love. Lane’s yarn, the first in her Reign of Blood and Magic series, sometimes bogs down in ruminative longueurs as characters brood on their predicaments, but it features rousing magical action set pieces and sorcery that’s engrossing and creepy. (Rickard, it turns out, isn’t dead but doomed to eternal consciousness in a paralyzed body, which Cynara props up as a statue while he experiences helpless pain and humiliation from the insults visited on his inert frame.) Lane’s prose is sometimes rough—“Bon appetite”—but intense and evocative: “Round and round [Scarlett] went on the stone stairs, each step downward taking her closer to her final punishment….all too quickly she would fall silent, buried by wet mud in her grave.” The result is an imaginative fantasy that reprises the themes of "Beauty and the Beast" with feisty characters and richly intriguing witchery.
An entertaining romance for sword-and-sorcery fans.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing romantasy melds inventive worldbuilding with a classic fairy-tale plot.
A woman sent to kill a magical beast in the forest instead meets a mythical king.
A year ago, Riela saved her village from a flood with magic she didn’t know she possessed. Now there are reports that a beast has attacked a hunter in the magical Forsaken Forest, and her neighbors insist she must fight the monster, even though she has little control over her magic. Riela realizes she’s likely to be killed, but she's saved by a powerful mage who transports her to his enchanted castle. Garrick is an Etheri, a member of a race of immortal mages who Riela thought were only a story; he's the king of the Silver Court, but a longstanding feud with Feylan, the king of the Blood Court, has trapped him on this plane of existence for 100 years, unable to reach his people in the Etheri realm of Lohka. Garrick tells Riela she's going to have to stay with him since the forest traps any magical being who enters. Riela and Garrick’s uneasy alliance is fueled by guarded suspicion and strong attraction. Garrick suspects Riela's a spy because of her powerful magic, and can’t understand why she doesn’t recognize him. Riela is afraid of Garrick's power and doesn't know if he's telling the truth about the forest. As they're trapped together, Garrick comes to realize how rare and dangerous Riela's magic is, and decides to help her learn to use it. This is Mihalik’s first romantasy after a string of well-regarded SF romances; it has rich, lush worldbuilding, especially once Garrick and Riela start to explore the secrets of her magic. Watching these guarded, wary characters learn to trust each other makes for an entertaining and compelling romance. The book is the first in a series and ends with a cliffhanger, with Garrick and Riela on the precipice of a new adventure.
An intriguing romantasy melds inventive worldbuilding with a classic fairy-tale plot.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780063411586
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Mind-bending and incisive.
In a declining world in which humans can access the power of banished demigods through self-sacrifice, a girl with a secret becomes a catalyst for change.
Long ago, the humans who served and sacrificed to the Noble and the Vile overthrew them and claimed their magic. Now, the Crown, peerage, and common council maintain control over the noblewrought and vilewrought with intricate contracts and magical bindings. Lorena is the only living dualwrought—possessing both creative and destructive wrights—besides the Crown herself. Unlike the Crown, she’s unbound and untrained. Free from the limitations of formal contracts, Lorena prefers nonphysical sacrifices like memories over gory self-mutilation. After a chance encounter with the Crown’s infamous vilewrought heir, Alistair, lands her in his laboratory researching a mysterious Door that is hungry for human sacrifices, Lorena must choose between the quiet life she’s built and the values she holds dear. The text’s anti-capitalist thrust is grounded in depictions of extreme economic stratification, including Lorena’s memories of childhood poverty and her mother’s untimely death, as well as her growing awareness of how those who crave power like hers don’t grasp the sacrifices required. Excellent asexual representation in Lorena, rich worldbuilding, political intrigue, and a cast of prickly, passionate characters round out the satisfyingly complex plot. Particularly masterful are the shifts in Lorena’s narrative perspective that reflect the sacrifices of significant memories. A White default is assumed for primary characters.
Mind-bending and incisive. (map) (Dark fantasy. 16-adult)Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7925-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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