An imaginative, contemporary sword-and-sorcery epic hampered by cartoonish gore and heavy-handed politics.
Sorcerers, demons, and social justice warriors unleash hell on Earth in this fantasy adventure.
Ever since her girlhood hobby of carving Gaelic sayings into white stones opened her to supernatural intrusion, 28-year-old London security guard Shelby Schouwenaars has shared her body and consciousness with a demon. Named Fen, the entity manifests as a blue mist that gives her superhuman strength and self-healing powers. Their relationship eventually becomes a psychodrama of bickering and, somehow, sex, and Fen introduces Shelby to other sorcerers—humans like her who bond with demons that take the form of a muscular arm, a dagger, or a 7-foot-tall blue bodyguard. She soon gets embroiled in a conflict between sorcerer covens vying for the favor of the demon queen Lilith, which leads to several massacres, including Shelby’s slaughter of a Las Vegas sex coven after its head sorcerer rapes her. (She spares coven member Jenn Blake, a blacksmith with whom she begins a lesbian affair.) Fomenting the war is sorceress Monique D’Aubainne—her servants include a cherub demon that yanks out opponents’ internal organs—who plans to conquer the world by binding demons from the Nether plane to her followers. She recruits these followers with muzzy, left-ish speechifying, exhorting a campus Young Socialists of America group to “become one with every benevolent collectivist philosophy.” Hypnotized, they denounce “the virulent disease of capitalism” along with “masculinity, currency and fossil fuels”; don black garb; and revile Shelby as an “imperialist parasite.” Assisted only by Fen’s power mist, a 300-pound suit of armor and a 210-pound sword forged by Jenn, a Colt .45 pistol, and several attack helicopters, Shelby has to take on the demon-enthralled radicals and worse to thwart Monique’s scheme. In this vigorous yarn, Kazi crafts an intricate, richly drawn fictive world. Less successful are his ham-fisted parody of the woke left and the long scenes of splattery carnage, which feel monotonous after the umpteenth dismemberment. At one point, Shelby relates: “His torso rips off of his lower body and flies off to the side, while my follow-through catches another in the lower thighs, cutting him right off his knees, making everything above his lower legs flip and spin in mid-air, painting the entire corridor in blood.” The story is more gripping when it explores the twisty power plays of good-hearted characters coping with inner demons.
An imaginative, contemporary sword-and-sorcery epic hampered by cartoonish gore and heavy-handed politics.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
