A diverting, insightful fusion of a dystopian yarn and a fairy tale.
Children fight to free themselves from an oppressive, segregated society in Cunningham’s dark fantasy.
Granny Rose, the “oldest storyteller left,” relays a tale to children around a campfire. It begins with four other grannies: Granny Sweep, Granny Spark, Granny Dirt, and Granny Brine. They each live in distinctive places (Granny Spark resides in a magical forest, for instance), but not one of them remembers how she got there.Granny Rose then recounts the tale of young Briar, who belongs to the “outside world” where poverty is rampant and the land is desolate. The comfortable people of the “inside world,” located underneath a vast dome, never feel rain or wind or any temperature that’s too hot or cold. This arrangement is essentially the creation of Noone, a sinister being who has a chief magician at his beck and call. Outside, members of the Guard actively subjugate the people, which includes going after “beauty singers,” whose songs are a form of rebellion. The oppressed population includes Briar, an aspiring beauty singer, and her two friends Sal and Jack. All three kids make an admirable attempt to escape the confines of the outside world. Granny Rose’s story gradually moves to a later time, when she herself is a young girl. Her mother and her peculiar twin aunties keep Rose a secret, hiding her away from both the inside and outside worlds. If she ever hopes to branch out on her own, she’ll likely have to face Noone, the ever-present villain.
Narrator Granny Rose makes it clear that Cunningham’s narrative is “not a children’s story.” It certainly tackles serious issues, namely the mistreatment of others based on social class and gender. The book has signs of violence as well, though much of it is implied. In this vein, characters deliberately withhold details or become evasive when someone asks a straightforward question throughout the novel; Granny Rose, for example, seems to be safeguarding the campfire kids from the story’s harsher content, and Rose’s mother declares her daughter to be “too young to hear about such things.” Readers will find plenty of wonderful surprises, particularly in the way Briar, Sal, and Jack fit into the Rose-centric tale. These four characters display valor, loyalty, and tenacity—Sal tries to determine her own fate by disguising herself as a boy, since that way she’ll likely do hard labor instead of being forced into sex work, as many young females are. It’s not all doom and gloom: The author makes several entertaining nods to classic fairy tales, sometimes directly and other times more generally (shoes, as they do in many fairy tales, play a crucial role in this novel). Rose’s aunties provide a touch of comic relief, with their nonstop banter complicating many conversations, whether they’re arguing or in complete agreement. The action picks up in the story’s latter half, and while the final act is definitely in no rush to reach the ending, the journey to get there is well worth it.
A diverting, insightful fusion of a dystopian yarn and a fairy tale.Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 388
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
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
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