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
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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