An offbeat adventure with a strong tween protagonist, high-stakes action, and heart.
A girl and a leopard discover a supernatural threat to human and animal life in this fantasy.
After her parents’ divorce, 12-year-old Calico Rae is sent to spend the summer with her dour uncle on his farm in the English countryside, unhappily separated from her older brother, Luca, who is living with their father in the United States. Life is dull until Calico finds a hidden, derelict old mansion with grounds once home to the long-forgotten, once-famous Menagerie. Una Ornithol, the Menagerie’s bird-bonded guardian, lives there with a boy and a girl who provide care for the animals that still reside on the premises. When Calico encounters the mansion’s self-isolated black leopard named Pardus, she finds that they share an unexpected affinity. “In days long passed,” Una explains, such a connection was called “genifying,” and with training, those so bonded shared their skills and senses. That Calico will need to develop her bond with Pardus becomes clear when the Menagerie comes under threat and her brother suddenly disappears during a visit to her uncle’s farm. From the start, Weller establishes a pleasantly unsettling undercurrent of something off-kilter about the townspeople and Calico’s uncle, increasing the tension with Luca’s disturbing “game” with bees, his mysterious research involving butterflies, and his distant attitude toward Calico’s warmth. The fantastical adventure then takes off, literally, in a flying caravan powered by birds. The author ratchets up the suspense with a vicious, blood-spewing monster called Grime; a secretive Central American tribe; Calico’s dangerous genifying trials; a bizarre Insect Queen; and a city, empty of all animals and many of its citizens, loomed over by a pair of towers where a new power source, claimed to be world-saving but rooted in a terrible secret, is about to be revealed. Although unlikable Luca doesn’t come into full focus (his relationship with the Insect Queen and apparent betrayal of his sister call to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”), Calico grows with her eventful experiences, informed by compassion and empathy. Readers are left with intriguing hints about Calico’s upcoming escapades with her leopard companion in a sequel.
An offbeat adventure with a strong tween protagonist, high-stakes action, and heart.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engrossing, action-packed sequel with a compelling cast.
A woman must undergo fearsome trials to free the imprisoned Titans of Greek myth in Owen’s fantasy novel, the second in a series.
Advancing from minor office clerk in the Order of Thieves to Queen of the Underworld, Lyra Keres’ star should be rising. But thanks to Cronos, King of the Titans, she and her longtime friend and fellow thief Boone have been ensnared in a new challenge beneath the earth: Hot on the heels of winning the twisted Crucible Games, Lyra—who has recently been granted goddess powers—finds herself trapped in Tartarus. Separated from her beloved Hades, she must liberate the fearsome Titans from seven Locks to restore the cosmic balance. As Lyra progresses through the Locks engineered by the Gods—each as tricky and lethal as the last—the pressure mounts as the Titans repeatedly remind her, “You will be our savior.” Rhea, the wife of Cronos, reveals that Lyra began this quest “a hundred and fifty years ago,” adding further devastation to the task at hand; the knowledge is helpful, but also painful, as Lyra reflects, “Suddenly, I don’t want to know that it’s real. Because then I have to contemplate how many times I might have ended up in Tartarus already.” As she materializes in and out of time pockets, Lyra sees Hades’ troubled childhood unfold and struggles not to intervene to save the man she loves. In this second entry in the author’s Crucible series, following The Games Gods Play (2024), Lyra’s cynical quips continue to make her an engaging protagonist. Her inner monologues are balanced with hope, love, and longing for Hades as she meets various versions of him. While resilient, Owen’s heroine is also vulnerable (“Was I his pawn in more ways than I ever realized?”). Her introspection effectively contrasts with the simmering rage and restraint in Hades’ chapters. The supporting Titans are given more depth than the traditional myths allow, weaving a knotty family fabric for the reader to navigate alongside Lyra.
An engrossing, action-packed sequel with a compelling cast.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781649378538
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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