A wild fantasy romp propelled by humor, horror, and heart.
A spider princess and her crew of misfits tangle with dark gods and the undead in this fantasy.
Spider Princess and reluctant bride-to-be Adrianna Morticia is about to wed dragon Prince Richard Valkanna, a long-arranged marriage (conducted by a lively corpse) that will join the two royal households after generations of enmity. The union will prevent a war and restore the spiders’ claim to their castle. Adrianna, whose shifts between spider and human form may make arachnophobes blanch, would much rather be back with her cadre of fellow adventurers (Ebbo, a diminutive “magick”-addicted islander; Clayton, a fashion-conscious golem; and Asakusa, a human in thrall to the demonic “Ways of the Dead” and in love with the princess). They fulfill missions for a powerful druid dwarf to benefit the multispecies City of S’kar-Vozi. Bent on preventing the wedding, Asakusa establishes a quick route to the remote spider castle using “Gates” to the paths where the dead of all faiths trudge and toil. Amid the chaos that Asakusa causes at the castle, Adrianna escapes, returning to her old life. She discovers that her three cohorts are facing a vampire baron, ravaging skeletons, and a monstrous half-crab, half-squid Kraken, all hell-bent on destroying S’kar-Vozi and adding its inhabitants to the skeleton army. Reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s brand of dark, comical fantasy, this offbeat novel by SF/fantasy author Mitchell is divided into five tongue-in-cheek sections: “An Engagement of Abominations,” “A Tropic of Skeletons,” “To Snort One’s Soul,” “The Vegan of Vengeance,” and “A Homecoming of Horrors.” Leavened by wicked humor and genuinely moving scenes of reflection (Adrianna, unlike her spider kin, doesn’t suck the life fluids of sentient beings and relies on kindly, unexpectedly complex Clayton to be her moral compass), the tale features easily offended half-orcs, snake god worshippers, and a tiny but fearsome assassin. The story details Adrianna’s attraction to both the untrustworthy dragon prince and diffident Asakusa as well as such deliciously repulsive horrors as Asakusa’s maggoty, body-consuming “Corruption.” The author pays sly homage to fantasy icons like Tolkien (the term halflings is a slur here) and George R.R. Martin (an epic battle waged by the undead). Except for some unnecessary recapping here and there, Mitchell’s massive worldbuilding is a blast from start to finish.
A wild fantasy romp propelled by humor, horror, and heart.Pub Date: July 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64456-152-2
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Indies United Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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