Magical characters navigate curious lands in an absorbing series installment.
A human mage searches for a long-lost heir as part of mission to free his imprisoned faerie love in Nielsen’s fantasy sequel.
Months after the events of The Claiming (2023), Summer faerie princess Lady Dew Drop, nicknamed “Dewy,” remains a captive of the Winter Fae. They’re confining her to their Winter Court until Spense Ferrous, an apprentice mage in the human kingdom Telridge, tracks down a missing Heir—the child of exiled Princess Snow. It’s a seemingly impossible task that Spense willingly takes on, as he and Dewy have fallen for each other. His plan is straightforward: Find the faerie Oracles and ask them where the Heir is. As this involves trekking the dangerous faerie lands, Spense travels with his half-brother Crown Prince Dirk and other Telridgians to the mystical region of the Between. Meanwhile, Dewy works with the unexpectedly accommodating Winter King Lumine to develop her water magic. If she manages to uncover a link between water and powerful blood magic, it could change everything. Nielsen ably depicts the various environments; brisk cold and “winter-starved pines and fir trees” surround Dewy, while “bent and stretched” trunks and branches form archways and corridors in the Summer faeries’ palace. It’s a solid backdrop for a breezy story teeming with modern dialogue and descriptions, including a “royally pissed off” Dirk. The two lovers recall Romeo and Juliet, but the author keenly expands upon their seemingly star-crossed status. Much of the narrative, for example, is about acceptance; for example, Spense, as the son of King Ferrous and Head Cook Cait, isn’t treated as well as Dirk is. There are also profound moments that focus on understanding others’ cultures: Winter faeries struggle to learn human customs, and Winter and Summer Fae are virtual opposites in many ways, including in their attitudes toward meat-eating. The strong-willed, ever-positive Dewy is a standout in a vibrant cast, even if she pines for Spense, who comes across as incompetent at times.
Magical characters navigate curious lands in an absorbing series installment.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781509255450
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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