A slow, expansive tale that engagingly combines the everyday with the mythological.
Appleton’s novel explores past lives and Greek myths.
In Italy, 1972, the unnamed narrator spots a woman who was his wife in a former life. The narrator is an American artist housesitting outside Rome. He’s hip to ideas about astral projection and reincarnation and is currently a “seven green,” meaning that he’s on his seventh reincarnation and that his aura is green. Naturally, when he tells the woman (named Valeria) that they were together in a time that she can’t remember, she’s skeptical. The two nevertheless form a friendship, and both undergo hypnosis. It is through such exploration that they learn about more than just their time together in ancient Rome; they knew each other long before then. In fact, he is Apollo, and she Daphne, the figures from Greek mythology. Yet just as these two old souls seem to be making a connection, Valeria and her family leave town. The story continues as the narrator lives his life with the knowledge that he is the mortal reincarnation of Apollo. This narrative, combining history, myth, and worldly problems, ventures to unexpected places—the narrator encounters obstacles ranging from an apologetic demon named Nagasura to an unhappy marriage with an alcoholic wife. The story takes on the feel of a memoir when the narrator discusses famous people he’s met and his various relationships, both romantic and otherwise. Some of these anecdotes prove to be anticlimactic, such as when he recalls how, when he was a child (in his current incarnation), he handed a bouquet of roses to Jackie Kennedy. Yet such mundane recollections help to ground some of the more outlandish events. The final pages kick things up a notch once Apollo learns the truth about some other figures from the days of the Greek gods.
A slow, expansive tale that engagingly combines the everyday with the mythological.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9798218093563
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Zirzameen Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2024
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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