An enemies-to-lovers fantasy adventure etched onto an Italian pocket watch running just a little slow.
A talented clockmaker undertakes a quest to restore her family’s lost nobility in Wendt’s fantastical novel of betrayal, gears, and murder.
It has been 20 years since Clemenza Giudice’s family was violently dispossessed of their aristocratic position during the “Raids,” violent uprisings led by Ludovico Guerra in his denunciation of the holy nobility. Working under the shadow of Ludovico’s Accademia, Clemenza’s remarkable talent as a clockmaker now only earns her a pittance to send back to her impoverished family. She hopes one day to restore their lost status even as she openly loathes the nobility of this new order, which is bereft of faith and propped up only with money. In a world that turns on the intertwined gears of fantastical automa and the mystical, toxic substance called “aether,” opportunities do exist for a skilled clockworker to change her fortunes—if she can harden herself to work for the same man who ruined her life. Ludovico now pursues an experimental aether weapon kept in Ptolomea, a region in the Caina Republic. To get it, he’s formed a team of expendables led by architect and nobleman Gianpaolo Velia, whose position and melancholic morality immediately turn Clem’s stomach, no matter how handsome he is. Wendt’s “clockpunk” (an offshoot of the steampunk genre) novel introduces a world of whirling gears, mechanical owls, and political intrigue where the Renaissance never ended; an Italian-to-English dictionary might be needed to catch some of the slyer references. (“The building was a marvel, made of clockwork, the wheels rotating around each other to create the illusion the building itself was shifting like a cluster of bees in a hive.”) Clemenza’s hatred of the nobility and desperation to restore her family’s status makes for a deeply conflicted and compelling hero. The book’s pacing will be vexing for some, but the gradual development of Clem and Gianpaolo’s romance, along with conversations and asides that tease out this world’s mythology, will be welcome to those looking to fully immerse themselves within the novel—which ends on a promising cliffhanger.
An enemies-to-lovers fantasy adventure etched onto an Italian pocket watch running just a little slow.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798990799202
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Story-Weaver Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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