An appealing anthropomorphic dog story commenting on and celebrating artistic pursuits.
An Italian greyhound travels to Brooklyn to search for his artist father, then returns to Venice and looks into his family’s creative roots in Merwin’s fantasy tale.
Piccolo Fortunato, born “at the turn of this century,” is from a family of dogs who helped humans build Venice in the fifth century and “developed dexterity far beyond any breed.” His adventure-loving greyhound father, Alfonso, was a sculptor who taught him how “to carve the wood, chisel the stone and with a small blue flame of my torch to cut and weld the steel.” Alfonso went off to the United States two years ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Piccolo tells his mother, Isabella, that he’s undertaking a search for his dad; on the ship to America, he meets famous Brooklyn-based human sculptor Guy Gizárd, who makes Piccolo his intern. Luckily, a human worker eventually reunites Piccolo with Alfonso, who was once a Gizárd intern himself. Father and son return to Venice to discover that Isabella has new pups and a new protector. Alfonso, Piccolo notes, is “almost twelve. But he’s had hard times, and the last two have been like ten”; after the art that he created finally gets shipped back from America, a tragedy occurs. Later, Piccolo has a renewed passion for art and life following supernatural communion with a canine ancestor and 18th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Tiepolo. The copyright page of this book notes this tale is based on the 2014 novella Piccolo, an Intern’s Tale, credited to two authors: Merwin and “Piccolo Fortunato.” Merwin tells this story with a clear sense of whimsy, as canine characters wear porkpie hats, enjoyably lap up wine, listen to and sing Frank Sinatra tunes, and yearn for romance. Along the way, the author also effectively skewers the modern-day art world—particularly its use of interns. Ultimately, however, this book is most effective as a joyful appreciation of Venice and great art, with depictions of the masterworks of Tiepolo and Tintoretto sprinkled among illustrator Arrigoni’s lovely, occasional grayscale images.
An appealing anthropomorphic dog story commenting on and celebrating artistic pursuits.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 9780578884097
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
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