An epic time-travel fantasy about how stories from the past can shape our future.
A patriotic historian in the grand nation of Dominion is sent back in time to make sure that events play out the way they’re supposed to in Harrow’s ambitious fantasy.
As a historian, Prof. Owen Mallory’s area of focus—or, more accurately, obsession—is Una Everlasting, the legendary knight who bravely served Queen Yvanne and helped her form the great nation of Dominion. While working on a manuscript he hopes will get him a fellowship, Mallory receives an old book in the mail. As he translates it from an older version of Dominion’s language, he comes to suspect that it’s a firsthand accounting of Una Everlasting’s death, which, if real, would be an enormously significant finding. Before he can figure out if the book is genuine or who sent it to him, Mallory is summoned to the office of Dominion’s Minister of War, the imposing Vivian Rolfe, who reveals that she sent the book as a test to see if he’d sell it or if he’d respect and protect it. Satisfied with Mallory’s dedication to Una Everlasting (and therefore to Dominion itself), Rolfe asks Mallory a simple question: “Are you the man who will save [Dominion]?” When Mallory answers yes, Rolfe stabs her letter opener through his hand, and as he bleeds onto the book’s pages, he’s sent back in time to Dominion’s ancient past, where he comes face to face with the real Una Everlasting. Mallory realizes that the book is a magical object that can send anyone anywhere in time when they give it their blood. He also realizes that Rolfe doesn’t want him to translate a book about Una Everlasting—she wants him to write it himself. Harrow has set up a complex and deeply compelling world in Dominion, where Mallory’s devotion to his country is complicated by his fixation on the myth of Una—and his growing love for Una as a human being. Una is beautifully drawn as a real person struggling to live up to the weight of becoming a legend, and Rolfe is a great villain; with each appearance, her knavery becomes so much more fascinating and devious that readers will turn the pages just to see what she’ll do next.
An epic time-travel fantasy about how stories from the past can shape our future.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250799081
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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