A sharp, entertaining zombie epic that gleefully defies expectations.
A couple battle hordes of zombies—who turn out to have a few shocking abilities—in this debut novel.
Two horror-loving YouTubers stay safely in their apartment when there’s a real-life zombie apocalypse outside. But after humans claim the uprising is nearly under control, Lilith Kane and Nate Warner brave the zombie-infested American city of New Southport. Unfortunately, packs of the walking dead overwhelm them and force the couple to split apart. Lilith flees to her small, nearby hometown, Leatelranch. The town may not be the best choice for a refuge, as it’s in the same spot as a giant cemetery of 300,000 plague victims. Meanwhile, Nate, stuck in the city and teamed up with wisecracking kids, aims to reunite with Lilith in Leatelranch. It’s quickly apparent the zombies aren’t like the ones in the couple’s favorite horror films. They move fast and talk; Lilith even suggests that they, for whatever reason, are “posing as ghouls.” She thinks the zombies have a plan, which may tie in to a precognitive vision her grandmother once had. But deciphering all these clues takes a back seat to merely surviving attacks from the unpredictable zombies, who aren’t so easy to kill. Gombinsky delivers an unorthodox zombie tale. The story’s increasingly complicated latter half, for example, digs into Lilith’s and Nate’s pasts as well as Leatelranch’s history. Nevertheless, fans of the genre won’t be disappointed, as there’s plenty of foggy ambiance, rotting corpses, and missing heads and limbs. The author moreover includes fun nods to popular zombie movies like Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 Return of the Living Dead. Gombinsky augments his simple prose with a perpetual, underlying threat of violence: “The moon is a scythe; it could cut you just for looking at it, and if there’s an opposite to glowing, that’s what it’s doing.” Mysteries surrounding the walking dead and even certain characters linger until the end, with many of them left to readers’ interpretations.
A sharp, entertaining zombie epic that gleefully defies expectations.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-9-08-312850-4
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Pigfarm Press
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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