If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel’s loaded with it.
A supernatural thriller set in a mystically bent Los Angeles of dark enchantment, looking-glass larceny, and apocalyptic gaming.
Whatever you do, don’t call Sid Catchpenny a detective. He prefers “thief” and so does everybody who crosses his path, whether they like him or not. Nonetheless, it’s Sid’s peculiar talents as a “sly” (a thief who’s able to literally walk in and out of mirrors) that set him on the course of a missing-persons case that’s weird even for a rococo urban fantasy like this. Indeed, Circe, the enigmatic 16-year-old Sid’s looking for, isn’t just “missing.” According to her mother, Iva, “She is. Gone....Missing is like she’s somewhere not where you left her. My sunglasses are missing.…My daughter is gone.” And so we’re off on a hallucinatory adventure rife with the kind of extreme violence, false leads, and hairbreadth escapes you find in thrillers only amped up with 1980s-style rock lyrics, video game arcana, and a mysterious force dubbed “mojo,” defined loosely (if not always clearly) as magical essences gathered from the emotions invested in objects, whether it’s the piece of carpet where a beloved dog used to sleep, the Sinéad O’Connor T-shirt Sid wears in memory of his murdered lover, Abigail, or a stuffed bat Circe’s mother clings to as a remnant of her daughter’s childhood. The more mojo one carries around in this world, Sid tells us, the more power one has—and the more power one gets, the more damage one can do. Which is something Sid fears may be happening with Circe and the company she’s probably keeping, including suicide cultists and online gamesters obsessed by something called Gyre, whose content has demonic and potentially world-ending powers. As his passage in and out of mirrors yields more clues, more mojo, and greater peril, Sid is confronting his own painful past with its bad dreams and depressive interludes. The book’s heavy rush of ornate imagery, outlandish villains, and exotic set pieces can get so intense that the reader may at times feel disoriented. But Huston’s writing packs a rock band’s hard-driving propulsion along with an electric guitar’s plaintive lyricism. You may at times feel as lost in the ether as Sid. But you can’t help sticking with his pursuit to its chaotic finish.
If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel’s loaded with it.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593685082
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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