Despite compelling explorations of monstrous impulses in women, this dark bedtime story cannot see the forest for the trees.
The woods call to three generations of mothers and daughters in this dual-timeline modern fairy tale.
In a Michigan tourist town, Virginia Cassata and her daughter, Gemma, live above an antique shop bordering the woods. Every day, Gemma is drawn to wander the fairies’ forest, and every night Virginia steals away her memories with an enchanted hairbrush. Desperate to protect her daughter while also thwarting a witch’s curse, Virginia will let this selfish magic rip her apart if it means keeping Gemma close. Fifteen years prior, Clarice and her daughter, Virginia, live above an antique shop bordering the woods. Every day, Virginia is drawn to wander the fairies’ forest, but rather than erase her recollections, Clarice scares her into staying away—until Virginia falls in love. The consequences of this human-fairy coupling ripple forward and backward in time, reflecting Clarice’s own unrequited desires and enticing the Slit Witch, who curses the family with ruin by Gemma’s 15th birthday. When the witch captures Virginia, Gemma must follow half-remembered steps to embrace her fey heritage. “It’s an old story, isn’t it?” Virginia, perennially caught in the middle as both daughter and mother, muses. “The sins of the mother, repeated, because the daughter tricks herself into believing that she can save her own daughter from the ache of regret.” Wees’ contemporary fairy-tale language favors layered repetition of motifs over narrative plot twists, which lessens the emotional impact of Gemma discovering these secrets and lies by omission. Inspired worldbuilding details, like Clarice offering up human-wrought antiques to be enchanted by the fascinated fairies, are sorely underutilized, especially for a story that tracks three generations in the same setting. While the epic quest transforms all three by the end, the reader may feel unfulfilled.
Despite compelling explorations of monstrous impulses in women, this dark bedtime story cannot see the forest for the trees.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593357521
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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