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
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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