An entertaining occult adventure hindered by ungainly pacing and a weak protagonist.
A gay man fights to prevent a demon from taking possession of his soul in Brightwater’s fantasy novel.
Kino Lim is a Singaporean man living in Taiwan, a devout Christian who is filled with self-loathing over his homosexuality. Into his apartment troops a beefy demon named Samon, who sports a cream-colored three-piece suit and is trailed by seven hollow-eyed women who do his bidding without question. Samon matter-of-factly informs Kino that the pastor of his Singaporean church has sold Kino’s soul to him. To buttress his claim, Samon demonstrates his ability to stop time and cause teacups to hover in midair, and also shows off a magic Polaroid camera that causes anyone it photographs, such as Kino’s flat-mate, Boris, to vanish into thin air; Samon promises to return Boris to the earthly plane if Kino surrenders his soul the following Sunday. Seeking a way out of the situation, Kino and his other flat-mate, Winn, go out hiking and fall in with a feisty ride-share driver, a woman named Tai. The trio survive a scrape with a gang sent by Samon to spy on them, then corner Samon in his den in a Taipei preschool, where the demon gains the upper hand. Samon and Kino continue haggling over Kino’s soul, and Samon grows so exasperated that he uses his time-stopping power to cause an airliner to crash. Kino visits an all-male nude spa, where he encounters an apparition of a young girl floating in ethereal light and is further fortified by a blissful orgy in a sauna. Kino dutifully reports to Samon’s preschool for a final confrontation, which devolves into a lengthy battle royale pitting Samon against Kino, Tai, three police officers, and a mysterious blind woman from the future who arrives through a tunnel from the Taipei subway.
Brightwater’s yarn mixes horror with action and a gay-friendly spiritual theme: Shame and internalized homophobia invite the devil in; self-acceptance sends him packing. His writing is evocative—“He had the rough, lean, worn musculature of someone who, though never exercising (beer, gambling, and dull sex didn’t count), had yet to run to fat”—and many scenes are vivid and cinematic (“One of its wings dipped, swinging down, swiveling toward the ground. In an instant, as if the dipping wing were dragging the rest of the aircraft, the whole thing plummeted toward the earth”). The narrative is haphazardly structured, with speeches and fights that drag on too long, and Brightwater’s prose sometimes feels too histrionic (“Her mud smacked the gangster in both eyes. He abandoned the belt and buried his face in his hands, squealing like a newborn in outrage at the womb’s end”). Samon is a blustery, malevolent, charismatic villain and Tai is a belligerent hoot, but Kino is a passive, limp hero who spends more time sobbing over his problems than solving them; readers may wish that Samon had set his sights on a more interesting soul.
An entertaining occult adventure hindered by ungainly pacing and a weak protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 9789574395194
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
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
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