An expertly crafted introduction to a new series of magic and adventure.
A mysterious young woman washes up on the shore of a secluded island in the first of a new trilogy from Wicked author Maguire.
There are always seven Brides of Maracoor, no more, no less. They live their entire lives in seclusion on their island, Maracoor Spot, where every day they go down to the water and weave their nets, a ritual that divides time into the well-ordered daily segments that allow civilization to function. Each year the Minor Adjutant, currently a bureaucrat named Lucikles, arrives from the mainland nation of Maracoor Abiding to check on the brides and bring them a replacement baby girl if one of their number has died. But one day, a young woman with green skin washes up on their shores, her arm flung around a goose and her hand clutching a raggedy broom. Rain, the green girl, can’t remember much of anything about her life before she washed up on the beach, leaving the brides to discuss among themselves what to do with her. Maguire’s longtime fans will remember Rain from Out of Oz (2011), but even newcomers will instantly connect the dots between her green skin and her broom, and if that’s not enough there are those odd rumors of flying monkeys looking for a green girl. Maguire is setting up for a spinoff trilogy here, and the obviousness of Rain’s origins for readers new and old alike allows him to spend more time fully creating the world of Maracoor Abiding with wonderful attention to detail. Sketching out just enough about Rain to build momentum for Book 2, this first installment does excellent character work with the people around her, particularly with regard to the power struggles among the brides on their strange island, with their strange task of weaving time. The larger world of Maracoor Abiding, with its priestesslike brides, mysterious artifacts, and its own systems of magic, myth, and politics, has echoes of Greek mythology and looks to be fertile ground as a setting for more books.
An expertly crafted introduction to a new series of magic and adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-309396-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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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