An entertaining fantasy full of derring-do, macabre color, and nerve-wracking suspense.
Brothers with psychic powers continue battling to save the world from pallid ghouls in this second installment of the author’s Heroes of the Line series.
Carlton resumes the saga of Nick Emerson, now 14 years old, and his 9-year-old brother, Frank, in a nameless American town under siege by ghastly “schades,” which have gray skin, milk-white eyes, and splintered teeth in lipless mouths. The schades travel between their world and ours, causing much physical and spiritual violence, but they fear light and can be hacked to death with knives. The narrative opens with Nick escaping a gloomy schade dungeon by means of a dimensional portal and the brothers resuming resistance to the schades using their superpowers (Frank reads minds and communicates telepathically; Nick is clairvoyant, knows magic, and can stop time with his stopwatch pendant). A growing band of schade-hunters assist them, including Mickey, a teenager who was Nick’s girlfriend in other timelines and feels their destinies are intertwined. The schades call in reinforcement monsters called “vestiges,” which are black clouds that poke holes in humans and are vulnerable to flamethrowers but not much else. Brutal scraps ensue amid portents that the Master Schade and his lieutenant, The One, are preparing all-out war against the world of light, prompting Nick to mount a daring operation to capture and interrogate a schade—no easy feat, since they can dematerialize into shadows. The novel also fills in backstory from Ireland circa 876 B.C., where the hero Oemir defended King Conchobar from a rebellion by an evil, supernatural race called the Sidhe. Carlton’s yarn offers plenty of action in a richly imagined fictive world, but it’s also a deeply psychological work that explores Nick’s claustrophobic traumas. The prose is vigorous and evocative, especially in punchy action scenes full of haunting horror imagery: “Bits and corners of the vestige flailed, trailing upward only to snap back to the whole. The ground shook as it shrieked, a sound of spikes on metal, while it twisted and turned and jerked.” The result is a page-turner that packs an emotional punch.
An entertaining fantasy full of derring-do, macabre color, and nerve-wracking suspense.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798337993461
Page Count: 267
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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