A well-crafted fantasy marked by tenderness and optimism.
A woman with elemental powers finds love while taking on the devil in this debut romantic fantasy.
Writer Katya Anders moved to Venice, Italy, three years ago. She lives with her best friend, Nina, and after a tragic upbringing in the United States, Kat finally feels as if she belongs. But while researching local myths for her next book, she gets the sense that Venice hides something. “People were afraid,” she notices, “and they obviously had been for a very long time.” One day, she bumps into a musician named Matteo with “expressive chocolate eyes.” She feels instantly bonded with him, and they agree to meet the next day at the San Nicolò festival. At home, she discovers a tattoolike mark on her wrist with red and blue strands intertwined. This is a “soulmark,” which should be impossible for her to possess. Kat is secretly a Daski, born to a human and a frost jotun from Norse myth. Her people have been denied soul mates by the fate-controlling Norns. Nina, a hopeless romantic and an Undine (water elemental), helps Kat prepare for the date nevertheless. Matteo woos Kat with a lovely night out and also possesses the soulmark. Then, near a stone bridge on the island of Torcello, a portal opens. The devil emerges, demanding the souls of seven children. Ruhl’s series opener focuses on Kat and Matteo’s romance while offering a detailed fantasy backdrop featuring the Vaettir, or Norse supernatural beings. Research helps the couple and their cohorts, including Matteo’s hotheaded brother, Leo, learn about a woman’s deal with the devil two centuries ago that still haunts Venice. Tension builds as readers wait for Kat’s special “kedja” necklace to break, which will unlock her dangerous ice powers. That Matteo is a fire-powered “Salamander” adds to the impossible odds of their happiness together. The cast expands to include arrow-shooting twins Arun and Janara and even Hela, “goddess of the Underworld,” who promises to cause the protagonist and her circle further trouble. Kat and Matteo’s romance is explored with the youthful enthusiasm inherent to new love. The audience will be interested to see if the author rocks their boat in the sequel.
A well-crafted fantasy marked by tenderness and optimism.Pub Date: March 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-258-8
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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