A beguiling tale of people trying to edit their lives into better versions of themselves.
A library that records the future upends the lives of academics in Allen’s quirky fantasy novel.
After receiving a mysterious message promising help in proving a theorem, Boston math professor Edom Thompson discovers an enormous library with millions of rooms, one of which contains books that detail every event of his past and future—including a book about a run-in with a mugger that comes true when he leaves the library. Edom brings in his graduate student Thomas and his friend Naomi, an art history professor, to help him explore the card catalogue. When Thomas discovers a book that mentions his future divorce from his wife, Belinda, he becomes obsessed with finding out how it will happen so that he can avert the breakup. Subplots revisit crucial periods in each of the characters’ pasts, including Edom’s romance with his college girlfriend, Leah, who got him to break out of his rule-bound cautiousness, only to see their engagement break up after his one-night stand with another woman; Thomas’ sometimes testy relationship with Belinda; and Naomi’s adolescent battles with her tyrannical adoptive mother, who ignored her when she complained about being groped by a swim instructor. Allen’s intellectually rich yarn muses deeply on the nature of free will as characters struggle to perceive and rewrite their fates—a project that hinges on math, philosophy, and Naomi’s exuberant classroom lecture on the artist Chuck Close, whose paintings paradoxically blend abstraction with photorealism. He grounds the novel in lushly textured depictions of everyday life that resonate with emotional insights conveyed in limpid prose: “The quick hug Leah gave Edom would have been their first if Edom had not been too stupefied to participate. As it was, the hug bore the singular possessive form of someone briefly holding a heavy bag for a boxer.” The result is an entertaining read full of curiosity about the puzzles of existence.
A beguiling tale of people trying to edit their lives into better versions of themselves.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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