A proficient mix of bloodsuckers and quiet romance.
A modern-day vampire develops feelings for a human in Harrison’s supernatural debut.
Vampire Simon maintains a low profile among the thousands attending the University of Illinois at Chicago. His kind are a secret from humans, so he never hunts UIC students and keeps social interactions to a minimum. Yet he’s uncharacteristically drawn to sophomore transfer Anita Rothard. He fights his urge to feed when they’re together, and the two grow close but avoid the word date. Anita’s father, however, disapproves of their budding relationship, believing there’s “something off” about Simon. While she’s reluctant to side with her strict, Catholic dad, Anita admits she knows little about her new suitor. Elsewhere, Shafax, the powerful “King of Vampires,” arrives in the U.S. and makes a beeline for Chicago. He seeks the blood of Salem, another vampire, who’s apparently killed Shafax’s minions. Now the King of Vampires plans to mete out his lethal plan on his own—an encounter Salem narrowly survives. Salem has no choice but to turn to Simon for help. These two have fought for years, but Salem believes that only as a team can they defeat Shafax. While Simon struggles to keep his world hidden from Anita, Shafax drags the couple into his personal war, all in an effort to draw out his true target. This entails the fearsome vampire threatening one of Anita’s loved ones, which only makes the capable woman want to join the fight against him.
Harrison’s story boasts a sublimely understated relationship. Simon’s romance with Anita is an effective slow burn; he’s wary of “human emotion,” and she has trouble defining their relationship, probably because of her overbearing, religious father. Though readers may see parallels to a popular vampire-teen romance series, the vampirism, as well as the romance, is often subtle. There’s not much on the vamps’ backstories, with a mere hint of Simon’s mysterious origin. Similarly, the story adheres to genre conventions, including bat transformations, aversion to garlic, and crucifixes charring vampiric skin. Harrison fleshes out the characters, such as certain humans who become Shafax’s unfortunate victims. While Simon and Anita make an engaging couple, Salem is the most memorable. He’s cynical, charming, and he flippantly calls Anita “Breakfast,” “Snack Food,” or Simon’s “pet human.” A snowy Chicago is well portrayed: “The light wind blew snowflakes into swirling patterns around Anita as she stared over the side of the bascule bridge into the Chicago River below. A rusted red truss separated the sidewalk from the street, although some passing cars honked and a few kicked up slush in their wake.” The narrative unfolds around Christmas, stirring up Anita’s questions of family and religion. Despite hefty character development, there’s plentiful action, especially in the novel’s latter half. These scenes, spotlighting multiple characters in peril, favor suspense over graphic depictions of vampire-related violence. The ending resolves some of the story, though Harrison clearly has a sequel in the works.
A proficient mix of bloodsuckers and quiet romance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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