An immensely satisfying final volume in Carlton’s humans-and-insects saga.
The conclusion to a fantasy trilogy in which embattled tiny humans vie with insects.
This final volume in Carlton’s epic Antasy series takes readers back to a world where people have evolved to insect size and are surrounded by terrifying predators on land and in the air. The first book, Prophets of the Ghost Ants (2016),introduced readers to a wretched human underling named Anand, who dreams of freeing his people from the terror of the Ghost Ants and eventually founds the new and enlightened nation of Bee-Jor. As the series progressed through the second volume, Prophet of the Termite God (2019),readers followed Anand’s journey through scenes of war, torture, and hairbreadth adventure. That adventure concludes in this final volume, in which the realm of Bee-Jor is tottering due to outside and internal threats, including one that’s represented by one of the book’s most intriguing characters: the mad Queen Trellana, who threatens the new nation’s very existence in these pages. This plot of this series entry involves a blinded and desperate Anand being captured by a mysterious group, among whom he makes new friends and allies while in captivity; meanwhile, he agonizes over his ignorance of what’s happening in faction-torn Bee-Jor, where war is looming and a tense situation isn’t being helped at all by Queen Trellana’s delusional histrionics.
Carlton skillfully manipulates readers’ feelings of anticipation about the fate of Bee-Jor and about Anand himself, and he does so right from the beginning of this complex volume. The saga of Anand, also known as “Roach Boy,” is still central to the sprawling narrative, but many other important plotlines converge in this concluding entry, which the author fills with engaging characters and gritty, often violent Game of Thrones–style action and realpolitik. Over the course of three books, the author has been pursuing this story with gusto and intense readability, often through the use of vivid, gripping language—as when Anand is in the midst of traveling, exhausted, and Carlton sets the scene by noting that “Night slithered in, as cold and damp as an earth worm.” Overall, this is an extensively fleshed-out world that’s raw and brutal but very satisfyingly imagined. Unlike in many other epic fantasy novels, the characters in this story (human and otherwise) really seem to live in this strange world; the internal consistency of the reality Carlton has imagined is solid to the last detail. This third volume is very much aimed at existing fans of the series; it begins with a large glossary of dramatis personae, but it lacks the kind of series-to-this-point recap that’s common in other fantasy tomes, and that’s sorely needed here; without it, there’s little chance that new readers can come onboard with this book. This is unfortunate, as the various aspects of Anand’s character are more effectively rendered in these pages than in previous entries, and Carlton’s handling of the multifaceted story has never been more confident.
An immensely satisfying final volume in Carlton’s humans-and-insects saga.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-242979-7
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Harper Voyager Impulse
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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