An impressive feat of worldbuilding full of unexpected twists for fans of monstrous women.
A powerful young queen learns to control the magic she wields and embraces her true nature in a world full of ancient gods, terrifying monsters, and treacherous men.
Rozlyn Ó Conchúir is a monster. Cursed by a vengeful witch on the night she was born, she spends most of her youth locked away from the world, feared by those she loves and despised for reasons she can’t comprehend. With only books to keep her occupied, Rozlyn waits for the Beast of Connacht—the winged monster that terrorizes her father’s kingdom—to be defeated so she can finally leave her tower and live the life she dreams of. As the years pass, Rozlyn becomes increasingly cold and malicious, fueled by loneliness and heartache. It’s only when she meets Jamie, one of the handsome and charming suitors chosen by her father to try to bring the curse to an end, that things begin to change. But as Jamie’s motivations come to light, and the pull of magic beneath her skin grows stronger, Rozlyn learns that sometimes the only person you can truly trust is yourself. While it’s easy to compare this book to “Beauty and the Beast”—the similarities become increasingly obvious as Rozlyn takes on her monstrous form—other influences are in play, too. The Thousand and One Nights is present in Jamie’s attempts to woo Rozlyn by recounting stories of love and war each time he visits her. The tales that Jamie weaves are peppered with Irish mythology, and a pantheon of ancient gods and unsettling fairy folk make appearances. Healy has also clearly taken inspiration from Grendel’s mother, and even goes so far as to have Rozlyn reading Beowulf. The resulting tale, told in chapters alternating between Rozlyn’s and Jamie’s points of view, is a delightful amalgamation that readers will find familiar but that stands on its own as a delightful, heart-clenching story of love and betrayal.
An impressive feat of worldbuilding full of unexpected twists for fans of monstrous women.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9798200979196
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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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