A sumptuous atmosphere and skillful worldbuilding carry this fantasy.
This new-adult urban fantasy debut sees an immortal with a secret help her long-lived clan stay one step ahead of those hunting it.
On an island in the swamps near Cocodrie, Louisiana, lives a clan called Nonagon. Among these eight individuals—also known as the Others, who are “really hard to kill”—is Dalia. She’s over two centuries old and has the power to enter a dreamscape called Pool. For the last six years, she’s been trying to rescue a man named Titus, whose spirit wanders the Dreaming in a childlike state while his body withers away somewhere. To complicate matters, an “ancient and powerful caste” called the Aion is hunting Nonagon. The group’s leader, Rourke, was betrayed by his “prized mercenary,” the Angel of Death, back in the 18th century. Unbeknown to her friends—including Fara, Lyvia, Emiel, and Marin—Dalia is the Angel of Death. Though she now works to save souls, not destroy them, Dalia doesn’t always succeed. In 1934, Rourke’s agent, the Chaser, caught up with the Others. Dalia blames herself for the death of the Others’ friend Lupe. Dalia’s romantic entanglement with the Aion Adalwolf haunts her as well. If Nonagon can find Titus and become Decagon, they may be able to halt Rourke’s vengeance. The star feature of Capes’ novel is an elaborate mythology that allows for great flexibility as the chapters flow. The present-tense narrative sometimes alternates with vignettes set in the past, which add texture, comedic and otherwise, to the cast’s backstory. For example, in 1986, the Others took a road trip to Atlanta because Lyvia wanted breast implants. The prose often offers frothy descriptions, especially in the Dreaming (“The sixth dream arrived through the basin as a symphony of haughty exaltations. They fizzled upward from the bubbling water as though it were a witch’s cauldron that undulated and crackled, producing hushed, urgent words”). The adroit worldbuilding includes the idea that only moonblood weapons—blades and bullets coated in menstrual blood—can kill the Chaser. There’s also a slow-burning eroticism in this series opener, which fans will surely crave to see more of in the planned sequel. Still, readers will need to be patient while the immortals play cat-and-mouse.
A sumptuous atmosphere and skillful worldbuilding carry this fantasy.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73437-761-3
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Capas LLC
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A perilous, magic-school adventure that falls short of its potential.
A loosely connected group of young magicians fight horrendous creatures to ensure their own survival.
Galadriel "El" Higgins knows how dangerous the Scholomance is. Her father died during the school's infamous graduation ceremony, in which senior students run through a gauntlet of magic-eating monsters, just to make sure her pregnant mother made it out alive. Now a student herself at the nebulous, ever shifting magic school, which is populated with fearsome creatures, she has made not making friends into an art form. Not that anyone would want to be her friend, anyway. The only time she ever met her father's family, they tried to kill her, claiming she posed an existential threat to every other wizard. And, as a spell-caster with a natural affinity for using other people's life forces to power destructive magic, maybe she does. No one gave Orion Lake that memo, however, so he's spent the better part of the school year trying to save El from every monster that comes along, much to her chagrin. With graduation fast approaching, El hatches a plan to pretend to be Orion's girlfriend in order to secure some allies for the deadly fight that lies ahead, but she can't stop being mean to the people she needs the most. El's bad attitude and her incessant info-dumping make Novik's protagonist hard to like, and the lack of chemistry between the two main characters leaves the central romantic pairing feeling forced. Although the conclusion makes space for a promising sequel, getting there requires readers to give El more grace than they may be willing to part with.
A perilous, magic-school adventure that falls short of its potential.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12848-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Absolutely superb.
Leaders of Britain’s abolitionist movement join forces with a veteran of the Haitian revolution to push back Napoleon’s deadly forces in Parry’s second Shadow Histories novel.
Napoléon Bonaparte isn’t a particularly talented magician, but his potential as a general and conqueror attracts the attention of the same mysterious figure who manipulated Robespierre to set off the Reign of Terror in A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (2020). When Bonaparte summons a kraken to serve the French navy and later finds a dragon hidden in the sands of Egypt, it’s only a matter of time before France and Europe fall at his feet. William Pitt, meanwhile, is growing weaker by the day as he works to keep a deadly and dangerous magical secret from his enemies. William Wilberforce continues to fight for abolition but is stymied at every turn. Fina uses her magic to help Toussaint Louverture keep hold of Saint-Domingue, but she eventually makes the journey to London and meets Pitt and Wilberforce. With a first-rate blend of political drama and magic battle–action, Parry manages to inject tension and stakes into a historical drama where average readers will know at least the broad strokes of the ending. Effortlessly switching from France to England to Egypt to Saint-Domingue, Parry folds in show-stopping new characters like Kate Dove, a commoner weather mage dead-set on avenging her brother’s death by kraken, and Lady Hester Stanhope, who would become one of the most famous explorers of the 19th century. When the three main characters, Fina, Pitt, and Wilberforce, finally face off with the stranger, the resulting conflict brings the series’ meditations on idealism, the fight for human rights, and the necessary limits of institutional power to a head.
Absolutely superb.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-45915-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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