Wow.
In this saga inspired by the ancient tale of “Beowulf” our hero is a 17-year-old death-trader named Frey.
Silver-haired Frey is the leader of a band of Boneless Mercies, women who roam the land bringing relief to the sick and the old. Frey’s sister Mercies are greenish-blond–haired Sea Witch Juniper, markswoman Runa, and reserved, stoic Ovie. The only male, Trigve, is a healer. The life of a Mercy is uneventful; she performs her death work, gets paid, and moves on. Once a deceased Mercy passes out of living memory, she disappears into obscurity. But Frey wants more than that. She wants bards to immortalize her in song. She wants glory, and if she dies seeking it, so be it. Her chance comes when she decides to pursue the legendary Blue Vee beast, a creature that decimates entire villages. Blue Vee’s jarl (king) has lost half his warriors to the beast, but Frey is confident that she and the Mercies can bring the creature down. The monetary reward for doing so will allow them to leave Mercy-killing behind. Narrator and protagonist Frey is quite unusual among female heroes: hungry for glory—bloodthirsty, even—but still likable. These fierce, honorable adolescent female warriors hold their own and break all the rules. Marked by flawless worldbuilding—even though it’s still a man’s world—the book is set in an alternate Scandinavia and assumes a white default.
Wow. (Fantasy. 12-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-30706-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A fresh, generous, wide-ranging compendium of frights.
Spooky stories covering multiple subgenres, plus some added attractions.
Few horrific tropes or creepy conventions are overlooked in Duplessie’s debut. The stories are arranged into six sections: “Short Frights for Dark Nights,” “Anatomical Anomalies,” “Five Minutes in the Future,” “Be Careful Who You Trust,” “The Dark Web,” and “The Unearthly, the Ghoulish, and the Downright Monstrous.” Some of the best entries are grounded in familiar setups, but Duplessie is careful to avoid repetition. The stories’ relatively short lengths and the crisp, direct writing style make this volume inviting for even reluctant readers, but it doesn’t shy away from the truly terrifying and grotesque. That said, the grisliest events are often described with poetic elegance rather than gratuitous violence: “His face collapsed like an empty paper bag.” The stories frequently conclude with the suggestion of frights to come rather than graphic depictions. One ends with an overly curious girl getting sealed up in a brick wall. Another foreshadows the murderous power of a cellphone. Highlights include the eerie “The Reaping,” in which the prick of a rose’s thorn triggers a spate of bloodlust, and “Chamber of Horrors,” which features a murderous iron maiden. Each story ends with a bonus in the form of a QR code and instructions to “scan the code for a scare”—if readers dare. Short, eerie poems are peppered throughout; there are even a handful of riddles. Most characters read white; names cue some ethnic diversity.
A fresh, generous, wide-ranging compendium of frights. (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780063266483
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
A weak trilogy finale: thin, purposeless, anticlimactic.
This sequel to The Godhead Complex (2023) ambles its way to a close amid just deserts and joyful reunions.
In the third volume of this series, which is set some seven decades after the events of the Maze Runner books, the possibility of a remedy for the zombie-making Flare virus sends parties of Immunes toward Alaska. The story unfolds through the perspectives of several point-of-view characters—Isaac, Ximena, Minho, and Alexandra. The descendants of the characters from the original world are joined by sage Old Man Frypan whom fans of the earlier series will already know; he accompanies Isaac, Ximena, and Jackie and gets the chance to try to persuade an underground colony of scientists that it’s time to rejoin the outside world. The cast just seems to be going through the motions here—so bland and juiceless that even the villain, a glib killer with a god complex who periodically enters a mystical state by reciting numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, seems too weak to merit the violent fate she receives. If ever a series showed clear signs of running on empty, this jumble of mini-chapters, darting choppily back and forth between storylines that are, too often, just marking time, fits the bill. Names cue some diversity in the cast.
A weak trilogy finale: thin, purposeless, anticlimactic. (Dystopian. 12-18)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798988421535
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Akashic Media Enterprises
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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