An entertaining romp, blending stylish storytelling and creepy carnage.
Supernatural husband-and-wife detectives—he’s a vampire, she’s a werewolf—take down paranormal perps in this rollicking horror fantasy.
Goodridge’s yarn opens in 1914, when New York police detective Madison Cavendish teams up with clairvoyant milliner Seneca Sue SunMountain (the police commissioner’s wife swears by her prophetic visions) to investigate the disappearance of a Broadway singer. Their encounter with the prime suspect, a tentacled, magenta-colored monster from the cosmic void, gets them killed and then reborn as vamp and lycanthrope, blessed with immortality, super-strength, and a primal bloodlust that they rein in with hyssop-oil tea; cementing their bond is their shared experience as light-skinned Black people passing as white in a racist society. After forming a private detective agency, their cases include a series of attacks by a were-hyena, which may implicate novelist Zora Neale Hurston and other figures of the Harlem Renaissance; a magic box containing a dangerous Persian demon that’s desperately sought by New York’s occult circles; and a vicious “blue devil dog” terrorizing West Virginia. Later chapters set in the 1960s and 70s feel grittier: Madison fights in Vietnam, where he slaughters dozens of Vietcong soldiers and spies a strange woman who hovers in the air and feasts on the corpses of the men he killed. The author sets a vivid, teeming fictive world of oddball characters and lurid creatures against an atmospheric portrait of Black New York and Harlem from their Jazz Age glory to the bleak 1970s era of heroin and street crime. With its juxtaposition of Madison and Sue’s usually affectionate banter and monster-of-the-month adventures, the novel often feels like a mash-up of The Thin Man and Ghostbusters. Goodridge’s elegant prose alternates between the jauntily picaresque and darker, gorier vibes when Madison and Sue unleash their beastly natures (“Sue, crouched over Octavius on hands and knees, ripped at his neck to the point of separating the poor soul’s head from the rest of his body”). The result is good, scary fun.
An entertaining romp, blending stylish storytelling and creepy carnage.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781957224411
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Current Words Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2024
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
A delightful, genre-defying debut.
Historical horror? Dark fantasy? Queer romance? All of the above!
“I was hundreds of years old before I ever met him, but that day we were both young.” While visiting his Florence offices in 2013, attorney Sebastian Grave unearths a bloodstained lambskin glove that belonged to a past lover—a man he’d met in the 18th century. Nestled within this frame narrative is a tale of desire, werewolves, and the French Revolution. In telling his story, Sebastian introduces Sarmodel, the demon with whom he shares a body, and a succubus named Livia contributes chapters in which Joan of Arc, her notorious ally Gilles de Rais, and the archangel Michael all make appearances. First-time novelist Sullivan wields the tools of multiple genres deftly, but what really makes this book special is its central character. Sebastian has powerful magic at his disposal, but he’s also human enough to fall hard for a hot young nobleman. When Sebastian goes hunting for the Beast of Gévaudan, he’s not looking for adventure. The first time, it’s because he can’t resist Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne. The second time, it’s because he dreams of a reunion with his love—even though he knows this is a hopeless wish against the advice of Sarmodel. Using Sebastian as a narrator keeps things light, in part because he has a droll, contemporary voice and in part because it makes the worldbuilding feel natural. There are footnotes, but there are no infodumps. The fact that Sebastian doesn’t know exactly what he is sets the tone for storytelling that leaves a great deal unexplained while providing enough detail to keep the reader engaged. Deploying Sarmodel as a sort of alter ego and allowing Livia to offer her own perspective on Sebastian also adds both depth and charm.
A delightful, genre-defying debut.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250362766
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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