Heaven and Hell entertainingly collide in this fantasy series entry with heavy religious undertones.
The battle of good versus evil continues in Ristau’s religious fantasy novel, a sequel to Fate of the Sisters (2023).
Blanca is a Guardian Angel, one of the youngest to become a Warrior and Protector. But that doesn’t mean she feels confident on her first solo assignment, the successful completion of which will be no small feat. Blanca has been charged to watch over 6-year-old Alicea and her mother, Patsy Garcia. The two have been hiding away for the past six years, since Patsy needed to escape her ex, Sergio, and the gang life he was involved in. Just as Patsy starts to feel safe, even going so far as to enroll Alicea in school, she receives an ominous letter in the mail reading, “You are both mine. I will find you.” Certain this message is from Sergio, Patsy gets in touch with Chuck Reynolds, the detective who had been in charge of her case and helped her start a new life. Luckily, he’s still on her side, and he wants to help. Blanca may not be able to interact with the human world, but she can call on her fellow Guardian Angels for guidance and advice—she can also interact with the demons that follow humans around and nudge them into sin. Blanca doesn’t know which humans are under demonic influence, but she knows the dark forces have big, evil plans, which include capturing and harming her charges. Can Blanca protect her humans, keeping them safe from the forces of Hell? In this engaging continuation of Ristau’s Fate series, readers will welcome back some familiar figures in the battles fought between the soldiers of Heaven and Hell. As in the first volume, the story intriguingly takes place on two planes, the spiritual and the physical (they interact with one another and run concurrently). Themes of religion and morality are present throughout, with the Guardian Angels attempting to guide souls toward eternal salvation. Though this novel has some crossover from the previous book, it can be read as a satisfying stand-alone narrative.
Heaven and Hell entertainingly collide in this fantasy series entry with heavy religious undertones.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798891276109
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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