A whirlwind journey that opens doors into other worlds but also into the heart of the human experience.
A debut novel about a bookseller who discovers the real power of books—if they’re magic.
When an elderly customer dies at Manhattan’s Kellner Books, Cassie Andrews finds herself in an inexplicable situation. In Mr. John Webber’s possession is a small, leather-bound book in a language Cassie doesn’t recognize. There are a few lines in English: “This is the Book of Doors. Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.” And then: “Cassie, This book is for you, a gift in thanks for your kindness.” Cassie shows the book to her roommate, Izzy, who’s wary. And yet, when Cassie thinks of a door she once saw on vacation in Venice, that door opens for her. Naturally, there are people who want this powerful book, and soon enough the underworld of rare book collectors is buzzing. Drummond Fox, known as the Librarian, happens upon Cassie using the Book of Doors, thanks to his own Book of Luck. But while Drummond seeks to protect books like Cassie’s, there are others—notably, someone known only as “the woman”—who seek to use them for evil. Drummond is eager to show Cassie the danger she’s in by revealing the full potential of the Book of Doors: “You can open a door to the past….That’s why people will want your book.” What follows is a multilayered exploration of how the book can influence past, present, and future, and how individual choices can have unimaginable rippling effects. Fans of books like Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore will love this world, though by the end Brown has moved from his initial focus on magical books toward a case study of the rules of time travel. One unexpected aspect is the gory depiction of torture at the hands of “the woman” and the books she possesses. These scenes are jarringly at odds with the initial tone of wonderment, but if you stick with it, you’ll reach a conclusion that’s both disorienting and deeply satisfying.
A whirlwind journey that opens doors into other worlds but also into the heart of the human experience.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780063323988
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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