A brooding fantasy sequel that, despite its large cast, remains immersive and rewarding.
In the second installment of Dillon’s dark epic fantasy series, following Mercy: Tears of the Fallen (2025), the fragile calm that followed the devastating Reckoning begins to crumble.
Across kingdoms still scarred by war, rumors spread that the powerful relics known as the Tears are a danger once more. These artifacts, capable of reshaping balances of power, draw warriors, rulers, and exiles alike into a dangerous race that could ignite another potentially world-ending conflict. Dillon continues to weave together multiple storylines, following characters who remain haunted by grief, betrayal, and vengeance. Some seek redemption for the roles they played in the Reckoning, while others are driven by ambition. The story of former knight Alevist, for instance, centers on the death of his family, and adventurer Steyvin struggles to find direction after the loss of his brother, Ilatu, who once guided him on his path. The latter’s journey becomes one of identity as much as survival, forcing him to confront what kind of leader, or destroyer, he might become in his sibling’s absence. Meanwhile, strange rumors ripple through the land of monsters in the mountains and a looming prophecy tied to the mysterious Dawn Tree. Dillon’s prose leans toward the grimdark tradition in which violence is brutal, morality is murky, and victory is rarely clean: “He spun the blade, driving it up and into where her heart should have been. The pulse of it thrummed through the hilt.” Yet the novel’s emotional core lies in its characters’ attempts to reclaim meaning from shattered pasts. The expanding mythology and layered politics deepen the scope of the series, even as the narrative occasionally slows under the weight of its many perspectives. Still, the author maintains a strong sense of momentum, steadily building toward the inevitability of another catastrophic clash.
A brooding fantasy sequel that, despite its large cast, remains immersive and rewarding.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9798253671177
Page Count: 686
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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