An often moving fantasy novel about emotional pain and a quest for personal and natural healing.
A king must go on a journey to heal the heart of a forest and save his people in Garg’s fantasy novel.
King Christopher of the land of Linden should be experiencing the happiest day of his life. His wife, Queen Lily, is giving birth to their first child when tragedy results in both her and the infant’s deaths. He wants nothing more than to sink into his grief, but the countryside has other plans. The beautiful, magical trees of the Linden Wood are starting to become diseased, and objects previously made from its wood are turning into piles of ash. Christopher and his closest friend, Martin, the master of the Linden Guard, rush to meet with the magic-wielding Keeper of the Wood to discover what might be done to save the forest. The Keeper’s answer is short but frightening: “I’m dying, and with me, bit by bit, the wood as well.” Now Christopher and Martin must go on a journey to find the Keeper’s heart, which she lost long ago due to a betrayal. Christopher and Martin hope that bringing it back to her will heal her and the wood. Only they can’t go on this quest alone: Alistair, the young boy that led them to the Keeper’s home and her only confidant, must go with them along with his mother, Geraldine, the Healer that recently failed to save the queen. Garg’s affecting novel offers readers a quest that fantasy fans may find familiar, but its primary story is one of grief, loss, and finding ways to move on after suffering. As such, the book is relatively light on fantasy but heavy on emotion, which may attract those who might otherwise be unfamiliar with the genre. The novel does move quite slowly—it’s almost the book’s halfway point before the main characters even receive their quest—but those who stick with it will experience a touching tale of a healing journey.
An often moving fantasy novel about emotional pain and a quest for personal and natural healing.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781639887460
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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