A curious, but curiously charming, allegory of a world in crisis.
Two hero(ine)s journey through a vast, crumbling palace that houses a surrealistic, decaying civilization.
Kew serves as apprentice to Hawthorn, the elderly Guardian of the West Passage. When Hawthorn dies, she tells Kew to warn Black Tower that the Beast will rise again, but she unfortunately fails to officially name him her successor, despite the fact that the Beast must be confronted by the Guardian. Kew therefore must leave Grey Tower and deliver the message to Black Tower, hoping that in return he will be named the next Hawthorn. The Beast’s slow emergence brings on a dangerously early winter; perhaps Black Tower could give the wheel of seasons a turn? Hoping to save the struggling people of Grey and to recover Hawthorn’s funeral mask (which Kew has taken), young Mother Yarrow of Grey House sets off in ineffectual pursuit. These two have separate adventures wandering through the crumbling, nearly uninhabited areas of the palace, where the remaining people engage in meaningless ritual: trying to teach apes to speak, concocting elaborate feasts that no one eats, issuing endless, pointless pronouncements that no one obeys, and so on. Meanwhile, the gigantic ruling Ladies of the palace are too self-involved to truly confront the crisis or to rule in general, having either gone mad or become more concerned with fighting the other Ladies for scraps of power. This is a vividly depicted, decidedly peculiar world governed by an inexplicable logic, where the seasons are determined by a vast wheel; people have animal, plant, or even inorganic characteristics; and rising up in the ranks of one’s profession might mean switching genders or undergoing other physical alterations. Its fablelike but off-kilter qualities and architectural setting will likely appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial, and Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel series.
A curious, but curiously charming, allegory of a world in crisis.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884831
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tordotcom
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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
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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