Spectacular worldbuilding, breathtaking action, and plenty of mischief.
Every year the twin cities of San-Er hold a set of games, a fight to the death with the promise of unimaginable riches for the victor. This time, there's an unlikely competitor—Princess Calla Tuoleimi, who’s presumed dead, has entered the contest in disguise.
For five years, Princess Calla has been living in hiding from the absolute monarch, King Kasa, ever since, in a defiant and ruthless massacre, she killed the leaders of Er—her own parents. Her plan has always been to free the people of San-Er from the oppressive monarchy, and she won’t stop until the palace falls and she has the king’s head. It’s finally time for her to finish what she started, and the only way to get close enough to him is by besting the other 87 players and winning the competition. Lucky for her, the king’s heir, August, would also like to see King Kasa dead and a new era for San-Er begun. With their aligned endgame of regicide and shared willingness to break some rules, August can assure Calla’s safety until the final battle of the games. But this book isn’t The Hunger Games—it’s an epic fantasy. So the wrinkle? There are people in San-Er with the ability to jump between bodies, and the best jumpers are the most confident and deadly competitors in the games. Gong packs her story with thrilling fight sequences in which each player’s distinct and recognizable pugilist style shines through even when they wear different physical forms. Eventually, Calla faces her toughest competitor, Anton Makusa, an exiled noble fighting to win the prize to pay off the medical debts of his beloved, who’s in a coma. From the moment their weapons meet, Anton has Calla questioning her single-minded purpose. In a power play dripping with blood and lust, the two become allies, though they know there can be only one winner. Calla and Anton are as charming as they are deceitful. No matter whom you're rooting for, there’s a lot on the line. When the book ends on a well-earned cliffhanger, readers will be clamoring for the next volume of this planned trilogy.
Spectacular worldbuilding, breathtaking action, and plenty of mischief.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781668000229
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
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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