A sometimes-confusing central mystery, but romantasy fans will delight in the dark, gothic worldbuilding.
In Northwick’s series starter, a woman with inherited magical powers knows that she is dangerous; she just hopes that she’s powerful enough to save the people she loves.
After leaving home at 16, after her mother disappeared to a magical place called the Dark Hall, Eleanora “Ellie” Blackwicket has lived in hiding for the past decade to avoid being identified as a Curse Eater who uses outlawed magic. When her attempt to save a woman from a Drudge—a monstrous curse—goes awry, she’s found by her father, Darren, who tells her that her older sister, Fiona, is dead. Ellie is soon back in her ancestral home—the austere Blackwicket House in Nightglass, where her peace is almost immediately interrupted by Inspector Victor Harrow, who invites himself to stay so he can investigate her for crimes related to Curse Eating. Ellie attempts to ignore him and attend to her late sister’s affairs, but she finds herself pursued almost everywhere she goes. She also attracts the interest of William Nightglass, Fiona’s former lover and the eldest son of the city’s abominable Principe, Grigori. He introduces her to Thea James, a friend of Fiona’s and a secret Curse Eater. They want Ellie to use her magic for their own ends, and Ellie wants them to answer questions about her sister. She comes to believe that Fiona had a son, and when she confides in Inspector Harrow, he asks whether she could have taken the child from the Dark Hall. Soon, other people die, and later, Ellie works to save someone riddled with curses and on the brink of death. A conspiracy is afoot, and as Ellie and Victor grow closer and learn each other’s darkest secrets, they can only hope to put a stop to the evil plans.
Northwick has a talent for suspenseful storytelling and skillfully conjures a sense of the gothic from the very first page. The magic system that she has created is a delightfully dark one, and this is seen at its best in Blackwicket House itself. The near-sentience of Ellie’s Drudge-filled childhood home is a compelling setting with great potential for mystery. However, the mystery that readers get loses some of its intrigue, due to a lack of clarity regarding the limits of magic in this world. The link between magic and curses is clear, and the Dark Hall is immediately established as a deadly place from which Drudges come—but although readers know Ellie is powerful, neither she nor the reader are made aware of what she can do until she’s required to do it. As she notes herself in narration: “Eleanora Blackwicket had never been asked to do anything harder than say goodbye and run.” A romantic plotline is similarly abrupt, and the male romantic lead behaves despicably towards Ellie; although it’s easy to foresee the development of their relationship, the story doesn’t do enough to establish him as a worthy partner. The result is an intriguing story that gets lost in the chaos of its own plot.
A sometimes-confusing central mystery, but romantasy fans will delight in the dark, gothic worldbuilding.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798988473879
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Northwick Books LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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