An offbeat, charming fairy tale best read with adult supervision.
A 1970s English village is upended by a nefarious giant and the ragtag group determined to stop him in Swan’s fantasy novel.
Young boys have gone missing in Nunn’s Wood for generations. According to local legend, a giant lurks in the trees—but without proof, the townsfolk blame local scapegoat Floyd Jenkins, presumed guilty after the disappearance of his friend Paul 50 years earlier. When a boy named Daniel’s best friend Jack vanishes under similar circumstances, Floyd joins forces with the newly appointed reverend Harlan Williams to clear Floyd’s name by “find[ing] the giant and mak[ing] him talk.” Their plan soon spirals out of control, however, when they come face to face with the Erl-King—an exuberant, immortal 8-foot-tall monster who has been luring boys from the village into the Land of the Dead for over a century. With the Erl-King now intent upon taking Daniel, the last boy in the village, Floyd and Harlan must protect him at all costs. Their last hope lies in the eccentric occultist and monster-hunter Prof. Whitsun; together, the unlikely trio engages in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the mythic creature. As they pursue the giant, they must also keep a step ahead of the local police and growing mob of villagers convinced the three are behind Jack’s disappearance. Despite the dark subject matter, Swan’s novel is an enchanting romp through a magical forest filled with heartwarming heroes, dastardly villains, and an evil curse, to boot. While the whimsical tone seems aimed at a younger audience, the language and content skew adult—especially the cantankerous, cigarette-smoking Floyd Jenkins and his fondness for vulgarities (he bemoans the “bloody-minded, pissed-off, bona fide, flipping, giant”). This tonal discord may limit the book’s appeal, but the author injects the narrative with a humor that buoys the story, often via Daniel’s boyish antics and the absurdist soliloquies of the Erl-King himself. Readers may get lost in a plot that often circles back on itself, though this doesn’t detract from the novel’s quirky appeal.
An offbeat, charming fairy tale best read with adult supervision.Pub Date: May 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798990953765
Page Count: 485
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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
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