A classic edge-of-your-seat monster mashup.
In Spielbauer’s novel, Vlad Dracula embarks on a monstrous path in a desperate bid to save his country and the woman he loves.
The year is 1450, and the Ottoman Empire, led by Sultan Mehmed, is expanding. Vlad III, the son of the murdered Voivode of Wallachia, Vladimir Dracula, languishes in a Hungarian prison. The night before he is to be executed, Vlad is rescued by Aeneas Piccolomini under the direction of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick William III, whose strategy for the inevitable war with the Ottomans requires Wallachia to be a strong geographical buffer between the two empires. Aeneas takes Vlad to Heidelberg, Germany, to study at the city’s university, where he teaches theology. Some years later, Vlad and his good friend Froederick Heffelfinger attend a guest lecture delivered by a traveling professor named Wlodek Serafin, who invites the attendees to consider that living forever may be possible. After the lecture, Vlad, Froederick, and Aeneas are accosted by members of a group that’s targeting Vlad for political and religious reasons. During a subsequent attack, Froederick’s wife, Millicent, and their scullery maid, Katharina—with whom Vlad is in love—are abducted by an undead, bloodsucking spirit called a Strigoi. Vlad, determined to save Katharina and defend Wallachia from the impending invasion by the Ottomans, seeks out Serafin to learn how to cheat death, and his ambition yields monstrous, bloody consequences. Spielbauer uses the true story of the historical Vlad the Impaler as the framework for his historical fantasy novel, seamlessly weaving together recorded history with folkloric figures like the vampiric, undead Strigoi and the wolfish lycans. The author’s passion for the subject and genre is palpable on every page, as is his meticulous research on the legendary Vlad Dracula. The prose tends to read as a bit stiff and detached at times (“Vlad drank deeply from the collected blood, and he did not wait for the soldiers to depart. Many of them gasped at the gruesome scene”), but the pacing is steady and the plot contains plenty of action and is compelling throughout.
A classic edge-of-your-seat monster mashup.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9798218913533
Page Count: 452
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A learned, literary manifesto on academia—and its darkness.
A Ph.D. candidate in Analytical Magick tackles a new academic challenge: rescuing her advisor from Hell.
Alice Law is about to complete her graduate program at Cambridge under the auspices of Jacob Grimes, one of the foremost Magick scholars in the world. There’s just one problem: A spell gone wrong has led to Grimes’ sudden demise, and it may have been her fault. Alice feels bad about that, plus she needs Grimes to approve her dissertation and help her get a job, so she starts researching ways to travel to Hell. Her plans are interrupted by Peter Murdoch, one of Grimes' other students—"He was simply born brilliant…Alice couldn't stand him"—and she reluctantly agrees to join forces. Despite the accounts of Dante and the like, Hell is full of surprises, including (sometimes) a remarkable resemblance to a college campus. As Alice and Peter journey deeper, they encounter nefarious deities; twisted, once-human enemies; and Shades from Grimes’ past with their own agendas. Hell will test Alice and Peter in ways their academic careers have not, dredging up their pasts at Cambridge, their messy relationships with their advisor, and their distrust of each other—after all, academia is a cutthroat game. The stakes are high, with mortal souls on the line, as Alice grapples with the question of whether academia even matters. Kuang melds a fantasy adventure (don’t look too closely at the magic—that’s not the point) with a rumination on academia’s problems to create a new take on the journey through the underworld. Alice is deeply flawed but also deeply understandable, stuck in a system that damages her while making questionable choices that feed into the same system; this is a tightly constructed novel that aims a clear lens on academia, with both its faults and its virtues. The heady draw of discovery is ever-present, even if what Alice is discovering is Hell.
A learned, literary manifesto on academia—and its darkness.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9780063021471
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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