A well-crafted but somewhat plodding first installment of an epic fantasy series.
A debut fantasy focuses on a pair of young people on a quest to save their world.
Jackson’s series opener is set on the world of Gaia, where a mixed population of races—humans, dwarves, and goblins—lives under the control of the Sovereign Empire. The empire was imposed on Gaia many years ago, when the mysterious, inhuman sovereigns saved the inhabitants of the land from the warring giant tartaruns and took control themselves. The sovereigns are enigmatic figures, imposing taxes and issuing laws prohibiting humans from using sorcery. They routinely abduct any human who shows an aptitude for sorcery, but since the talent usually manifests at puberty, the book’s teenage main characters, Carver and Helena, no longer worry about being taken by their distant masters. Instead, as the novel opens, the two young people are preoccupied with making the regular trading trip to a busy port city of their island home far on the edges of the empire. But when that city is attacked by a violent insurgent group called the Lost Seekers, Carver and Helena’s settled backwoods world is upended. According to one of the sovereigns, the rebels’ “assault was aided by the forbidden use of sorcery.” Carver and Helena soon find themselves hunted by strange forces and thrust, along with their village friends Sebastian and Nina and a handful of others, into a broader world full of dangers. This is all extremely recognizable material—a cloistered youth fulfills his destiny—and Jackson takes his time setting things in motion. But his characters, particularly Carver and Helena, snipe and squabble in refreshingly contemporary-sounding rhetoric. And Carver’s slow transformation from grumpy, oblivious boy to purposeful man eventually takes on a certain compelling drama. Even so, the book suffers from typical series opener woes: too much exposition and a sluggish pace. Fantasy fans will hope things pick up in the sequel.
A well-crafted but somewhat plodding first installment of an epic fantasy series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-03-912844-6
Page Count: 542
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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