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
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.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
