A refreshingly unique take on the eternal battle of good versus evil that amuses while it philosophizes.
In Isaak’s fantasy novel, an unsuspecting man discovers the role he was born to play in defeating the forces of darkness on the battlefield known as Earth.
The year is 1969, and Crystal Keeling finds herself in Manhattan at the end of a six-month-long hitchhiking trip. The adventurous young woman dips her toes in a cult known as the Children of Pan, where Crystal was “asked if she’d be willing to play a lead role in The Children’s fertility rites…and when she discovered it involved no more than a little friendly semipublic sex, she was happy to oblige.” After a disappointing non-orgy with the cult’s goat-masked leader, Crystal wanders off to her next adventure. Cut to 35 years later, and Crystal’s adult son Arby is the result of that brief liaison. Living in Saudi Arabia at the time, Arby takes a flight home at his mother’s request. Then he meets Elaina, a blind woman who turns out to be not exactly mortal. Instead, she and Arby are dragged into an epic battle between the forces of light and darkness. Their main adversary is “an entity who lived in both worlds, the etheric and the physical,” who goes by the name of von Fleischer (aka: The Flayer). It turns out that the Children of Pan had been on to something, and Arby soon discovers powers he never knew existed. After Crystal is kidnapped, Arby must reconnect with his previous lives in order to cross “the bridge” into the Inner Planes—a process that he may never be able to find his way back from: “Constriction and form will have to contend with infinite space, and you will have to find a path between the two.” Only then does Arby have a chance at defeating von Fleischer and the darkness he brings once and for all.
Sex with a goat-masked cult leader might be considered a risky way to start a novel, but Isaak pulls it off by blending some absurdly humorous observations (such as one about unplanned pregnancies) with plenty of action and a shrewd eye for philosophy and religion: “It’s an ecosystem. There are entities who feed exclusively on love, entities who feed exclusively on war, even rarefied entities who feed on intellectual excitement. There are others with more catholic tastes, feeding on an array of emotions. Any of them, of course, thrive on worship, for these entities, when encountered by humans, are called gods.” Arby’s journey from ordinary man to bona fide Hero with a capital H is one that forces him to consider the inner workings of both the universe and himself. Naturalistic dialogue provides an easy way to bandy about various philosophical ideas, including the existence of past lives and our ability to shape our past, present, and future. And every time readers think they know where the plot might be going, Isaak tends to take a hard left to set off on new courses that will intrigue even as they baffle. A truly shocking outcome and the promise of a new beginning all make for an ending that, upon further reflection, perfectly fits a novel of this sort—one that constantly keeps readers on their toes.
A refreshingly unique take on the eternal battle of good versus evil that amuses while it philosophizes.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Utamatzi Inc.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
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
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