A crackerjack yarn featuring a strong heroine, plenty of action, and genuinely surprising twists and turns.
A young queen fights for vengeance—and her realm’s people—as she confronts her ruthless father and uncovers shocking secrets from the past in Barrett’s fantasy novel.
This first installment in The Keepers of Imbria series introduces Orabelle, Queen of Lehar and one of the four rulers of the fantastical realm of Imbria. Able to bend water to her will as the Keeper of Water, she is still subject to the whims of her tyrannical father, Chronus, who betrothed her to Blaise, a loathsome Fire Keeper and the King of Veruca. (“The water whirled at my command and rose up in a column to touch the tip of my finger. All this power, and I still felt my own weakness like a shroud that I could not remove, the weakness of having been born a woman.”) Orabelle has been secretly carrying on an affair with her Guardian, Tal—a fact that’s soon revealed and results in an act of horrific violence. Orabelle sets out on a quest, soon learning hidden truths about Tal, her dead mother, and herself. Her departure unfortunately means leaving her beloved sister, Maialen, in the poisonous hands of their father. Meanwhile, the Fomori, a band of outsiders with “glowing eyes and sharp teeth,” threaten all four realms. But the more Orabelle learns about them, the more the Fomori seem to lead to the answers about her own past she’s been searching for. Barrett creates a strong, intelligent protagonist who is easy to root for, even as Orabelle makes some questionable decisions. With naturalistic dialogue, vivid worldbuilding, and smooth prose, the novel fully immerses its readers in a realm full of magic and treachery. The brisk pace urges the plot onward without the narrative ever feeling rushed or underdeveloped, and a truly shocking ending is certain to leave readers eagerly looking forward to the next book in this promising series.
A crackerjack yarn featuring a strong heroine, plenty of action, and genuinely surprising twists and turns.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798988889120
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Anthem in Art
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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