One man’s heartache begets an understated, wholly absorbing fantasy.
In McClelland’s debut novel, a grieving widower finds unexpected purpose in Ireland while in the company of mythological creatures.
Losing his wife and their 3-year-old son in a house fire practically shattered Will McConnelly. The Texas drama professor takes an indefinite leave of absence to drown his sorrows in whiskey. But Will’s Irish father-in-law won’t let him hide away; he tells Will to take his family’s ashes to Ireland and scatter them there. Will agrees and flies to Drumkeeran, where he checks into a local bed and breakfast. Though he fully intends to “release [the ashes] into the Irish wind,” he has another agenda—he’s planning to die by suicide and join his wife and son. But one night, after drinking heavily at a pub, Will enters an apparent dreamworld of fairies and their queen. When he wakes up, all he wants is to see the Fairy Queen again; luckily, his new drinking buddies Conor and Seamus believe his astonishing tale. The older men even know how Will can get back to the Queen, which simply requires that he complete three tasks. The first: find, challenge, and defeat a selkie, a mythological beast akin to a seal. The remaining tasks involve other such creatures, from a shapeshifting pùca to the water spirit kelpie. These challenges that Will must undertake are daunting and sometimes even scary. And what will he do if and when he reaches his goal? Is Will still determined to give up life, or can he find a way to say goodbye to his lost loved ones and move on?
McClelland’s apt depiction of grief and loss shows Will moving through an array of emotions, from quiet suffering to angry outbursts. Intermittent flashbacks to his years with his wife Cara both develop her character and amplify Will’s agony. The couple’s convincing relationship teems with good memories (like their meet-cute and their first day as newlyweds) as well as bad (such as an intense argument and their son’s “terrible twos” carrying on into a third year). The fantasy elements are more oblique as creatures stemming from Irish and Scottish folklore subtly enter the narrative; Will, Conor, and Seamus drink quite often, so readers may wonder if the protagonist is imagining some or all of the amazing things he witnesses. This, however, doesn’t diminish the demanding tasks or the significance of Will seeing them through. Along with the winsome Conor and Seamus, standouts among the cast include Meg, who runs the B&B and is ever-patient (even when Will misses breakfast), and Samthann, an outgoing and sympathetic local bartender. While the encounters with mythical beings make lasting impressions, some of the most memorable moments in the story happen in the everyday world, including Will sustaining a surprising injury on his way to a pub and speeding down narrow roads with Conor and Seamus in a ‘74 Pinto (which may or may not belong to either man). The author masterfully limns the narrative’s fantastical sights, such as glowing fairies gliding past a castle’s footbridge with colorful, trailing ribbons, and a deafening thunderclap that sounds like “artillery fire in a canyon.”
One man’s heartache begets an understated, wholly absorbing fantasy.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 9781953100207
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Scarsdale Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2024
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
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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