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
This series provides the perfect escape from reality.
Kel Saren adds more threads to his tangled web of secrets in this follow-up to Sword Catcher (2023).
Kel takes the protection of Prince Conor very seriously. As Sword Catcher, he’s more than just a bodyguard; he’s part spy, part body double, and part confidante for the man with whom he grew up. But as he investigates the possibility of a traitor in Conor’s inner circle, Kel is forced to keep secrets for Conor’s own good until he can be sure whom they can trust. Meanwhile, after the disastrous events of Conor’s first engagement in Sword Catcher, the prince has a newfound dedication to his role and tries to navigate an advantageous new match for himself, this time with the beautiful Princess Anjelika, who is more than she seems. Conor is keeping his own secrets, namely that he has enlisted Lin Caster to tend to his ailing father, King Markus, who’s suffering from a strange ailment that means he must be kept hidden from his subjects lest they know their king has possibly gone mad. As Lin investigates the truth behind the king’s malady, she and Conor struggle to deny their growing—and forbidden—romantic feelings for each other. The second novel in an epic fantasy series is notoriously hard to pull off, and the colorful world established in Sword Catcher does dip into soap-opera territory here. But a little swooning in a fantasy adventure story never hurt anyone, and even at a hefty 500-plus pages, the story never drags for a moment. Lin’s chapters remain a high point, with Clare drawing from her own Jewish heritage as the inspiration for many aspects of Lin’s Ashkar community and faith. And luckily for readers, Clare turns every table she can find in the final pages.
This series provides the perfect escape from reality.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780525620020
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
A promising page-turner from a poised newcomer who’s well worth keeping tabs on.
This doorstopper epic fantasy and trilogy opener was originally self-published in 2014.
The details that give this ingeniously plotted yarn its backbone emerge gradually—and are not always entirely clear. Twenty years ago, a war swept away and annihilated the tyrannical Augurs when their formidable magic inexplicably faltered. Their servants, the Gifted, whose lesser magic derives from Essence (Islington has an irritating habit of capitalizing things), were forcibly constrained to obey the Four Tenets, meaning they can no longer use their magic to cause harm even in self-defense. At a school-cum-sanctuary-cum-prison for the Gifted, three 16-year-old friends, Davian, Wirr, and Asha, face their final tests. Though an excellent student, Davian cannot use Essence and faces a cruel exile. He decides to abscond. Wirr believes Davian’s an Augur whose higher-order magic blocks his ability to channel Essence, and he insists on joining him. Ilseth Tenvar, a seemingly sympathetic Elder, gives Davian a mysterious magic box to guide his progress. The next morning Asha wakes to a nightmare of her own. On the road Davian encounters the strange, scarred Gifted Taeris Sarr, who three years ago saved his life (Davian doesn’t remember the incident) and supposedly was executed for his pains. In the far north an ancient evil stirs, while in a related development, Caeden wakes in a forest to find himself covered in blood and with no memory of anything. So, in time-honored fashion, nobody is what they seem to be, everybody has a secret agenda, and the key players all lack pivotal memories. And while there’s nothing much new here, Islington’s natural storytelling ability provides incessant plot twists and maintains a relentless pace. The characters have well-rounded personalities and don’t make decisions or errors merely to advance the plot, even if they all sound and act the same youngish age.
A promising page-turner from a poised newcomer who’s well worth keeping tabs on.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27409-8
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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