A striking and effectively written fantasy that will force readers to explore serious issues.
A temple slave and a royal bastard battle the corruption of their brutal society in this debut historical fantasy.
In the village of Sefu, 16-year-old Roma serves Mother Lamia, Goddess of Virtuosity. The teen lives in the Lamiapur temple, where girls are auctioned off to men. But three years ago, Roma cut her own face after a patron sexually abused her. While she had hoped to delay her auction, Roma has now learned from Amma, who runs the temple, that she'll be “auctioned on the sixteenth auspicious night of the Festival of the High Lord.” Meanwhile, in the high caste city of Ferozi, Leviathan Blackburn mourns the death of Gabrielle Saheba, the woman who raised him. Leviathan is the only son of the Firawn, who rules the region with an army of vicious Wardens. Because the Firawn sired Leviathan with a casteless woman, he sent the boy away to be trained as an elite Al-Mawt warrior. Now, Leviathan is determined to prove that Gabrielle was killed by the Firawn’s first wife, Mā Saheb. This leads him to wield his savage streak against the patriarchal structures propping up his father’s rule. Yet he knows this life is a prison. Both he and Roma long to shape their own fates, and perhaps together they can. Lal Din crafts a lavishly detailed tale, rich in pre-Islamic Arabian mythology and culture. Beautiful descriptions will transport readers, like the horse, Cinder, who “was a nuance of ash that glistened a molten silver in the ethereal light of the moon." But for all the elaborate clothing and rituals, this world is as cruel as any other. Roma’s adoptive younger brother, Chirag, was “born neither complete male nor female” and is considered an “abomination.” And though magic—like the parasitical “Ghameq,” who feast on violence, anger, and fear—exists, the narrative is built largely around the protagonists’ traumas. The author explores evils like human trafficking and rape, delivering this larger observation: “When people lived primitive lives, striving to cover their basic needs, humanity was bound to shrink.” This is an apt assessment that any sequel will hopefully work to counter.
A striking and effectively written fantasy that will force readers to explore serious issues.Pub Date: March 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-83804-650-7
Page Count: 338
Publisher: White Tigress Press
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Surprisingly hopeful at the last, but despite careful worldbuilding and tense plotting, the book barely escapes being a slog.
In the conclusion to a trilogy that began with The Justice of Kings (2022) and The Tyranny of Faith (2023), Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt and his clerk, Helena Sedanka, prepare for a final confrontation with the zealot Bartholomew Claver.
Declared traitors to the Sovan Empire, Sir Konrad and Helena (our narrator) are both on the run and in search of an army to destroy Claver, who is bent on Imperial rule; the demonic entity who grants him dark magicks has more ambitious designs on the entire mortal plane. Somehow, Helena is the key to halting these wider plans, which marks her out for special attention from demonic and angelic beings. Meanwhile, Sir Konrad, whom Helena had previously revered (and loved) as a paragon of the law, does more and more legally and ethically dubious things to save his Empire from Claver, Claver’s fanatic followers, and his demonic allies/puppeteers, including deposing the Emperor and taking up forbidden magicks. How many principles will these two have to compromise to defeat this overwhelming evil? It's interesting to see how this trilogy, while consistently maintaining a grimdark tone, has slowly shifted subgenres over the three volumes. The first book was primarily a fantasy mystery, the second a political fantasy, and the third more of an epic fantasy featuring an ultimate battle between the forces of good and evil. Overall, the series is an intriguing chronicle of one woman’s struggle to develop agency, despite the overpowering influence of her mentor’s strong personality, vast political and religious currents, and, ultimately, gods and demons from other planes of existence. We know that Helena survives these (mis)adventures, since she narrates the entire saga as an old woman looking back; the unrelenting onslaught of terrible things that happen to her before the thankfully cathartic climax may either grind the reader down or cause the reader to disengage from her plight(s), aware that despite her many, many brushes with death and multiple turning points where she believes she chose poorly, she will ultimately prevail.
Surprisingly hopeful at the last, but despite careful worldbuilding and tense plotting, the book barely escapes being a slog.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780316361989
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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