A cerebral, nightmarish, but compulsively readable tale.
A girl tries to do what’s right in a world thrown into darkness in Gomel’s fantasy novel.
In Svetlana Chernov’s world, it’s a felony to break a mirror. Mirrors are conduits of the Voice, the deity worshiped by all who follow the Light. The Light, in turn, protects humans of MotherLand from the dangers that beset them on all sides: an invading army of wolf-headed men on their borders, and the infectious, ever-evolving, zombie-like Enemy that plagues them at home. In the industrial town of Loadstone Rock, teenage Svetlana stays up late studying the Enemy: their physical modifications, feeding habits, and other dangers. Her best friend, Tattie, isn’t quite as academic. When Tattie attempts a dowsing ritual with a mirror meant to reveal her future, she’s drawn mysteriously into its depths; Svetlana realizes her friend is missing and sets out to find her—a quest that causes her to cross the path of Andrei, a confused soldier who’s wandered away from the war, and Vadim, an Inspector tasked with rooting out Enemy infestations. Svetlana’s search for Tattie becomes a disturbing journey into a society—and a belief system—on the brink of collapse. Gomel’s prose is inflected with Slavic-tinged folklore and Soviet-era imagery, effectively creating a world that feels both familiar and alien at the same time: “The dark windows of granite-clad mansions frowned at the wide boulevard lined with bare black trees….Svetlana had heard horror stories of the cocoons hanging in the stuffy dark and hatching shape-shifting oborotni and krovososy, the crawling, worm-like vampires.” The mythology and imagery throughout the novel are rich and weird—one that brings mind the Eastern Front of World War II, but with monsters and lightsabers. Even more impressive is the psychologically rich portrayal of characters pushed to the brink by war. This novel, with its remarkable and timely echoes of the current conflict in Ukraine, will make its way into readers’ minds and refuse to leave.
A cerebral, nightmarish, but compulsively readable tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781988034331
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Vraeyda Literary
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 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
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