An unflinching, riveting quest with plucky kid heroes and exhilaration at every turn.
Undaunted young friends trek perilous terrain to save their world in Early’s fantasy novel.
The land of Quaan receives a gift from the God-Snails every 100 years. The latest imminent gift will surely aid in fighting off “Gloomtide,” a “kind of despair” that’s overwhelming Quaan citizens. But signs of the God-Snails’ arrival put them just past a grove that’s besieged by toxic fumes. To retrieve the gift, the Imperator sends children of Crimmish, an outcast town disparagingly called the Stenches. It’s rife with poisonous air that townsfolk have built up a resistance to, though adults ultimately succumb to the fatal “Maddening.” The less-exposed Crimmish kids are ideal candidates for moving through toxic fumes, and the Sour Flower Gang, so named for harvesting a local, plague-curing flower, willingly heads north with the Imperator’s soldiers as guides. Tween boys Ditto and Fincher, along with Ash, her younger sister Sammi, and the group’s youngest, Hana, travel across Quaan and encounter its myriad dangers, including assorted creatures, despicable humans, and any number of other things that can kill them. Early’s often harrowing tale unfolds in a vividly detailed setting. Social class distinctions enliven the narrative, with the Imperator’s (and even the soldiers’) haughtiness noticeably contrasting with the geniality of the Crimmish locals. The bulk of the story comprises a series of thrilling misadventures that Fincher and the others fall into, such as a favor that necessitates diving into a lake infested with megamouth sharks. Despite the heroes’ young ages, this book is definitely for adults; violent imagery entails “fountain[s] of blood,” “rivers of red,” and “chunks of flesh,” and the brutal fights are all the more shocking for involving children. Still, a few unexpected allies, along with the youngsters’ unyielding tenacity, give the tale an encouraging tone.
An unflinching, riveting quest with plucky kid heroes and exhilaration at every turn.Pub Date: May 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781734231489
Page Count: 684
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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