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
A smart and highly original work of modern fantasy.
After the events of Book of Night (2022), Charlie Hall is forced to hunt down the perpetrator of a terrible massacre.
Charlie Hall is the Hierophant: It’s her job to be tethered to a powerful, independent shadow—a “Blight”— and hunt down other Blights for the Cabals, the heads of their respective shadow-magic specialties. The Cabals use the difficult job of Hierophant as a punishment, but Charlie agreed to take it on so she could be the person tethered to Vince, aka Red, the Blight who posed as a human and ended up dating and falling in love with Charlie. The Cabal leaders used magic to steal the part of Red’s memory that contained his relationship with Charlie, and so Charlie is determined to steal Red’s memories back. And she needs to move fast, because if Red doesn’t remember loving her, he just might be OK with Charlie being killed if it means his own freedom. Meanwhile, Mr. Punch, a terrifying Cabal leader who specializes in using shadow magic to possess other people’s bodies, has a job for Charlie: He wants her to find the culprit behind a terrible massacre that was attributed to a cult. He suspects that the people were actually killed by a Blight, and he doesn’t want the Cabals to face the blowback if the truth becomes public. Mr. Punch could do terrible things to Charlie if she fails, but if she succeeds, he’ll help Charlie and Red be free of the Cabals for good. The sophomore novel in a series is always tough, but this sequel proves that the second book can be even better than the first. Black turns the screws on the magical world she set up in Book 1, creating complicated political motives between Charlie and the Cabal leaders and making the question of what it means for a shadow, like Red, to have their own consciousness more interesting. Veteran con artist Charlie makes some truly brilliant moves, especially toward the end, where the last few chapters have one terrific surprise after the other.
A smart and highly original work of modern fantasy.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781250812223
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
