A whodunit in fantasy form makes for a complex, original tale.
A servant of the god of autumn tries desperately to figure out who stranded her master in the land of the living.
Tirne holds a coveted position within a religious sect that worships the four seasons, each personified by a different deity. As Autumn’s Herald, she is responsible for escorting the god from the divine realm to the human world every fall and back again via an ancient portal called the Mirror that Heralds alone can manipulate. During their annual three-month sojourn abroad, Autumn sleeps with a mortal Consort to produce magical demigods known as Scions, and Tirne catches up with friends, takes part in earthly life, and enjoys rendezvous with her own lovers. Since she was appointed Herald five years ago, Tirne has excelled in the role—until, that is, the Mirror inexplicably shatters after she and Autumn cross over for the sixth time, severing the connection between the two domains and spelling bad news for mortals. With the Mirror broken, autumn will stretch out indefinitely, food reserves will run out, and many will starve—not to mention that the trapped souls of the dead will begin feeding on the living. It’s a premise that recalls the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, but with plenty of twists and additions. Horrified and shaken, members of the sect and even skilled civilians immediately set to work trying both to repair the Mirror and find the person or people responsible for its destruction. Suspicion immediately falls on Tirne, the last person to touch the Mirror before it broke, and she is demoted to common acolyte. Devastated by the loss of her title, status, and sense of self, Tirne begins to conduct her own research into the Mirror’s destruction. Some plot points feel disconnected from the larger narrative, and the ending comes abruptly, but the mystery is compelling and Tirne's world is richly drawn.
A whodunit in fantasy form makes for a complex, original tale.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781250896490
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
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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