A vibrant, entertaining quest with memorable characters; a promising start to a fantasy trilogy.
Pawlicki’s series starter embarks on a fantasy adventure in an Asia-inspired milieu of gods, monsters, political intrigue, star-crossed romance, and family secrets.
In a world where myth and magic abound, immortal supernatural beings roam Heaven and Earth, with some even worshipped as gods. The eldest and most powerful of these are the Nine Colors, who reign over lesser gods and mortals. The ruler of all creation is the Sun Emperor, Aka, whose dutiful daughter Jin, Goddess of Beauty, has been engaged to her childhood friend Xiao, the hedonistic God of Pleasure, though neither party is excited about their arranged nuptials. Then, on the night of the formal engagement, Aka is struck deathly ill by a curse. The young couple, with the help of master thief Nanami, must enter the underworld and obtain a magical black peony to save the emperor. First, though, they must travel to the resting place of the fabled Great Warrior, the last owner of the key to the underworld. Instead, they find Bai, the Great Warrior himself, who’s very much alive. As the four immortals journey together, battle enemies, and uncover secrets about Aka’s past indiscretions, Jin finds herself at the center of a vast family conspiracy; meanwhile, she finds herself also falling in love with Bai, and Xiao grows closer to Nanami. How will they escape their vows and the mysterious forces trying to stop their quest? Pawlicki presents a sprawling epic with plenty of page-turning plot developments while also keeping a strong focus on the emotional arcs of her central characters. The novel occasionally leans on rather familiar tropes of fantasy romance—characters fall in love at breakneck speed, for instance—and there are a few clunky monologues that explain the mechanics of the fictional world’s intricate magic system (“Born immortals inherit all the abilities and needs of their parents and grandparents. That is why you sometimes…feel emotions like Aka”). However, the novel more than compensates for these moments with its well-constructed setting, charming characters, and its ever evolving conflict with increasing stakes.
A vibrant, entertaining quest with memorable characters; a promising start to a fantasy trilogy.Pub Date: April 2, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-57-656915-1
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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