A Capraesque story about friendship and second chances.
Two confused, deceased people return to life to help their estranged survivors in VanPatten’s fantasy novel.
Twenty-five years after his death, Guy returns to Earth dazed, naked, and in the middle of downtown Chicago. Prior to that, he had spent a quarter-century trapped in the netherworld, alone, in a dwelling that vaguely resembled his apartment when he was alive. “I’ve just learned to accept that we deceased exist as we do, outside of the perceptible world of the living, somewhere between the looking glass and eternity,” Guy narrates. “We are out there, beyond the stars, within the stars, around the stars. I’m not sure.” But now he’s been called back to Earth—literally called, on his netherworldly phone—by his ex-boyfriend, TJ, who, in a moment of crisis, evoked the dead Guy’s name. Guy doesn’t particularly want to help TJ, but since he’s back on Earth, he might as well check in on his sister and his final boyfriend to see how their lives turned out. After manifesting some clothes, he heads to the cellphone store and meets Torrance, a 12-year-old who, like Guy, is obviously dead. (To the dead, the living glow with an inner vibrancy, but other dead do not.) Torrance was called back by his dad—with whom he was not on the best of terms—and the two agree to help each other on their missions. VanPatten deftly switches the point of view between Guy and Torrance, cleverly contrasting their different reactions to their peculiar situation. Here, Torrance describes his perpetual tween frustration in the netherworld: “I tried breaking out once. Nothing worked on the door, so I threw a chair at the living room window. The stupid thing disappeared right when it made contact, vanished into thin air.” VanPatten delivers a fun, thoughtful fantasy with a big heart.
A Capraesque story about friendship and second chances.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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