A brilliantly imagined and transportive collection of surreal bedtime stories.
A writer conjures tales in response to an artist’s surreal images in this collaboration by Golden and Owens.
A girl who was born mid-flight—not on a plane, but to a winged mother—can never sit still but instead feels compelled to swim constantly through the air in the story “The Itinerant.” In “The Mainer,” a shipwrecked cabin boy is swallowed by a whale, only to have a strange sense of déjà vu. A princess, in “The Sister,” demands her servants make her a doll replica of the twin she absorbed in the womb, while her old brother communicates with the ghost of the subsumed twin to plot revenge. In these fabulist micro-fictions, Owens introduces readers to such otherworldly characters as the Town Crier, the Mischief Maker, the Lunar King, and the Handmaiden. Each is inspired by the accompanying portrait made by artist Golden, whose surreal visages evoke rich personalities and vast worlds. The Scout, for example, has a spotted, river-stone-shaped head of midnight blue, wearing a crown reminiscent of fingerling potatoes, held up by a neck that might have been made for an ornate porcelain vase. “The Scout floats suspended at the center of The Constant Sphere,” begins Owens’ accompanying story, “gazing into a seamless 360 degree spinning cyclorama of the heavens crafted by winged innocents.” Golden’s images are arresting: The textures suggest analog sensibilities of an earlier era, and while there’s rarely a traditional face to be found, there’s always the suggestion of a thoroughly human countenance. They’re complemented by Owens’ dark, dreamy fairy tales in the tradition of Russell Edson, Donald Barthelme, and Lydia Davis. Just as Golden’s collages bring together disparate materials, Owens’ stories take a number of different forms and voices, each one resetting readers’ expectations for what a story might be. The final character, the Storyteller, reveals that he works in a “story bank, ever echoing with tens of thousands of nearly subaudible voices constantly murmuring….” These murmurings effectively follow readers through the book—and may do so for quite a while afterward.
A brilliantly imagined and transportive collection of surreal bedtime stories.Pub Date: April 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781736516768
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Animal Heart Press
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A freewheeling, action-packed fantasy with a dash of romance.
Kova offers a fantasy novel set beyond the Nightgale Mountains in the walled fortress of Vinguard where citizens live in fear of the next deadly dragon attack.
Vinguard’s residents are always on guard against the threat of dragons, but they must watch more than just the skies. Living among them, hiding in plain sight, are the “dragon cursed”—people who, at any moment, may transform into terrifying winged beasts and destroy the city from within. For most of Isola Thaz’s life, she’s been told she’s the reincarnated savior of Vinguard. But just as she begins to suspect that she may be dragon cursed, she’s tossed into Vinguard’s Tribunal—a contest in which every 18-year-old competes in tests of skill and might to separate loyal citizens from the dragon cursed. As she’s sequestered for this rite of passage, Isola hesitantly allies herself with a handsome fellow competitor named Lucan. However, as the teens face such trials as fire-breathing automatons (“The silver beast comes to life with a swing. Its claws shear through the dim light”), starvation, and actual dragons while unarmed, Isola begins to feel that Vinguard’s traditions come at a cost that’s too steep. Meanwhile, Vicar Darius, Lucan’s father and the leader of Vinguard’s shadowy theocracy, the Creed, is desperate to take Isola’s powers for himself—and, to that end, he puts her into increasingly tortuous situations. However, neither he, nor Isola’s teenage rivals, are very compelling antagonists; instead, they come across as caricatures of cruelty. Still, the novel is fast-paced and action-oriented with a punchy prose that prioritizes movement over fantasy aesthetics. A sometimes-fraught romance between Isola and Lucan slowly blooms, but Isola’s relationship with her family forms the true emotional core of the narrative. Although the worldbuilding in fairly simple, the story sets up a massive mystery that promises big payoffs in a potential future installment.
A freewheeling, action-packed fantasy with a dash of romance.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781649377838
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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