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
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
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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