A lively and absorbing tale that mixes real-world history with supernatural creatures.
In this dark fantasy series opener, a newly orphaned teen contends with diabolical men and precarious demons in war-torn 17th-century Germany.
Eighteen-year-old Gustav, returning from a chore, discovers that mercenaries have stormed his family’s home. His father doesn’t survive, but Gustav goes in search of his missing mother and sister. The teen is ill-prepared for the raging war out there, rife with soldiers and mercenaries like the ones who attacked his family. Luckily, Martin the Feldsher (a field surgeon), takes him on as an apprentice. Martin is more specifically a “Black Feldsher” who deals with demons as well as humans. These distinctive field surgeons perform a “secret ritual” to amp up soldiers (from both sides), allowing demons to possess the human fighters. This entails summoning demons, of course, which an experienced Black Feldsher can control. So who’s the demon that seemingly bonds with Gustav? The teen must be summoning the creature, though he simply doesn’t know how he’s doing it. Later, Anike, another apprentice, joins the two; she’s actually a thief whom the Holy Roman Empire’s Imperial Count has enlisted to snatch Martin’s “Book of Demons”—and maybe kill the surgeon and Gustav, too. Walters grounds this fantasy with a rich historical backdrop, unfolding near the end of the Thirty Years’ War. The story moves at a steady clip, pitting Martin and Gustav against intimidating horned and clawed demons and men who rival the creatures in malevolence. At the same time, characters evolve, from Martin as Gustav’s father figure to the teen’s flourishing relationship with Anike. But the highlight is the spirited banter between Gustav and the flippant demon, who doesn’t like people touching its horns and loves dining on human flesh. This ever expanding narrative touches on the demons’ origins along with one villain’s sinister political agenda, all culminating in a searing cliffhanger that deftly sets the stage for the sequel.
A lively and absorbing tale that mixes real-world history with supernatural creatures.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 979-8353728986
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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