Excellent and innovative worldbuilding, memorable characters, and nonstop action—highly recommended.
The third installment of Givler’s urban fantasy saga continues the story of a mortal entangled in a supernatural power struggle that threatens to spill over onto an unsuspecting SoCal populace.
To say that Matthew Carver’s life is complicated would be a vast understatement. His soul was stolen; his betrothed, Ash, is a Faerie princess in exile who is also the Devil’s daughter; and his position as a squire of the Hunt training with the legendary Orion is in jeopardy after a contingent of dragons (the Dragon Dons) filed a grievance with Polaris, aka the North Star, to disband the Hunt. Polaris has called for a Constellation Congregation (the first such gathering in almost 250 years) to resolve the issue, and all of the powerful Constellations have been invited. In a brilliant twist by the author, this convocation is to be held in Los Angeles, disguised as a regular pop-culture fantasy/SF convention (“Will there be any Star Trek people there?”); attendees won’t blink twice when supernatural entities with magical weapons or dragonlike humanoids stroll past. With so many enemies harboring long-standing grudges gathered in one spot, chaos quickly ensues. Although the main characters’ various backstories can get a bit convoluted, there is a lot to love here. Givler’s unique take on constellation-inspired mythology is reason enough to read the series, but the ensemble cast of deeply developed characters also gives the narrative a strong emotional impact. It’s the pacing that makes the novel so compulsively readable—the final 100-plus pages are essentially one extended epic fight scene that is so well choreographed that readers will have trouble putting the book down before its conclusion. The descriptions are undeniably immersive: “The asphalt of the road had turned to putty and was sticky underfoot. Steam sizzled off everything as the rain fell on the superheated street. The whole block was burned and blackened, like it had been in a toaster oven for too long.”
Excellent and innovative worldbuilding, memorable characters, and nonstop action—highly recommended.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781958204092
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Sad Seagull Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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