An enjoyable vision of a fascinating world with an intriguing landing.
A college student falls into a crevasse in Antarctica and discovers a civilization that believes that she’s the answer to a prophecy in this fantasy-series starter.
One day, 20-year-old Shara Kennington awakens in an ice cavern below the Antarctic Circle. She’s on a research team, led by her father, studying climate change. She remembers falling into a crevasse and that her dad did, too, but she doesn’t see his body anywhere. She summons the energy to explore her surroundings, but all goes black again after she arrives in a beautiful pastoral area. She next awakens in a castle as a captive of the kingdom of Shalemar, which is in the middle of a revolution. She’s rescued by Prince Joffrey, who’s fighting against his father, Shalemar’s king. Shalemar formed in the 1500s when a ship full of British pirates, led by a son of King Henry VII, discovered this amazing terrain under the ice. Joffrey, who becomes king after his father’s suicide, must wed immediately and quickly produce an heir. Despite culture clashes, Joffrey and Shara are drawn to each other and marry. Traveling the kingdom, Shara learns about a prophecy that a red-haired woman will become Shalemar’s warrior queen; many are sure it’s her. Joffrey, who’s less certain, lets her attend his meetings with his circle of male advisors. She also participates in a battle in which Joffrey’s forces push an enemy group into retreat and helps the team to build high-tech aircraft. But pressure builds for Shara to get pregnant, as Malina, the enemy leader’s daughter, schemes to get Joffrey—and power—for herself.
This novel is an entertaining mashup of the King Arthur and Atlantis myths with some steampunk-type flavor thrown in; there’s no modern military aircraft until Shara comes along, but a special water tank is used to heal Shara. As often is the case in series-launch books, the detailing of the various players can get a bit excessive. Some of the Circle members, for example, figure little in this novel, but they may play larger parts in future books. Some readers may also be taken aback by some of this novel’s violence, as when Shara is tortured by Malina’s goons, although this also serves to underscore issues of misogyny that the book raises. The romance between Shara and Joffrey has lovely moments, as when he repeats his vows of love. The geography and climate of Shalemar is also artfully rendered, complete with a Turquoise Sea (“When it was still, the Turquoise Sea reflected the sun on the mountains, seeming to double their voluminous peaks”) and a calendar of festivals marking this world’s progress from days of nonstop sunshine to days of complete darkness. It comes as a bit of a shock at the end of the novel that one major player is termed “incidental” and an unanticipated new setting emerges. Ultimately, though, this saga’s elements of surprise and lingering questions will whet one's appetite for the next installment. An enjoyable vision of a fascinating world with an intriguing landing.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2022
ISBN: 9798637913039
Page Count: 646
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2022
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
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
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