A sometimes turgid, sometimes beguiling fantasy of spiritual awakening through creativity.
A woodcarver’s sacred project unites Druids and Christians in artistic communion in this soulful fantasy adventure.
It’s the year 99 C.E., and the Gaulish townsfolk of Carnotum—present-day site of the cathedral of Chartres in France—are suffering under the jackboot of the Roman Empire, which is intent on stamping out worship of their Celtic gods. When the Black Virgin, an ancient wooden statue of a divine mother and child, gets vandalized, the Druidic priest Bryok asks young woodcarver Caradoc to sculpt a replacement. The assignment poses dangers—he’s menaced by Carnotum’s chieftain Turi, who wants to carve the statue himself—and pitches Caradoc into a labyrinth of occult experience. He is supervised by a veiled woman named Lavena, aka Crunarch, “the keeper of the flame,” who provides him with candles, lightning-felled wood, consecrated tools, and a studio in a forest grotto and drives off marauding Romans with her whip. To help him visualize the Black Virgin, Caradoc consults Kailex, a seeress who goes into a trance to narrate a prehistoric Celtic migration out of an Atlantis-like drowned continent, and the bard Érimón, who sings of the baptism of the Black Virgin. With the sculpture in hand, Caradoc learns that Lavena has been captured by the Romans. He rushes to save her from slavery. Müller’s yarn blends Christian legend with pagan mythology to assimilate the Virgin Mary into a tradition of “earth mothers,” from the Greek goddess Artemis to the Egyptian deity Isis. Apart from some scuffles and a vivid, well-drawn scene of a degrading slave auction, the drama here is mainly emotional, religious, and very female centered. The novel’s mystical effusions—“With the blood from the sacred crucible, the blood that is my blood, that is His blood, that is our blood, I dedicate this place to the eternal feminine within all human beings”—sometimes go on too long. But Müller’s workmanlike, slyly lyrical prose—“he picked up a handful of tiny pebbles and threw them indifferently over the lake, listening to them plop, disrupting the water’s flawless surface and sounding like a clutch of elves clapping”—gives an enchanting folkloric sparkle to Caradoc’s world.
A sometimes turgid, sometimes beguiling fantasy of spiritual awakening through creativity.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73401-702-1
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Alkion Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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