This rich fusion of crime and fantasy should enchant readers.
A killer targets high-ranking victims in a society of elves obsessed with genetic purity.
On the world of Ados, in the elven city of Tenyl, Constable Inspector Reva Lunaria tries to enjoy her day off. She’s summoned, however, to the office of First Constable Aescel for assignment to an important case. First Magistrate Lavalé fey Avecath has been murdered, cleaved clean in half one night in his study. With her longtime partner recently transferred, veteran Reva must work with the inexperienced Ansee Carya, who as a Seeker can investigate any magic used at the crime scene. In the First Magistrate’s study, the two encounter Green Cloaks—or the Sucra—who act as King Aeonis’ secret police. Inquisitor Ailan Malvaceä orders that all documents be collected from the study, which infuriates Reva. In turn, she graciously allows the Sucra to witness a Speaking, during which the corpse is magically induced to offer verbal clues about the murder. In this way, the investigators learn that a black blade committed the deed. At the scene of a second killing—this time Lady Tala Ochroma, the king’s treasurer, is the victim—a healer refuses to save the life of a collaterally injured halpbloed (half-blood). Ansee loses his temper and strikes the elf, revealing the extent to which bigotry divides the citizens of Tenyl. In this marriage of fantasy and procedural thriller, the team of Habiger and Kissee (Unremarkable, 2018) gives fans of both genres a master class in worldbuilding. Everything from idioms (“But tread carefully, Inspector. You are on a narrow branch here”) to fascist racial doctrines mesh in a narrative that pulses with innovation on every page. While much of the emotional heft comes in comparing King Aeonis’ purity laws to those wielded by the Nazis, personal demons also haunt the characters in this series opener. Reva finds herself addicted to the stimulant Wake, and the halpbloed Cedres Vanda desperately wants to reunite with his family despite his wife’s disgust for him. A wider conspiracy puts the kingdom at risk, and the charming, flawed protagonists prove themselves a winning combo worth visiting again.
This rich fusion of crime and fantasy should enchant readers.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-932926-61-3
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Shadow Dragon Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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