A stellar cast headlines this engrossing, otherworldly tale.
This epic fantasy traces generations of a magical family doggedly squaring off against witches, vampires, and other evil beings.
The Sosunovs are humans who settled in an “isolated, demon-haunted otherland” long ago. They’ve developed such skills as lucid and shared dreaming as well as spiritual combat. This novel, broken into chronological stories, mostly centers on one member of the Sosunov family: Valentina Grigorievna. When she’s a young girl, a heron-witch goes after her family in a fishing village named Fortitude. This heron-witch, striking in dreams, renders comatose all of Valentina’s 15 family members. The girl, along with the never-ending job of caring for the household and the incapacitated Sosunovs, must defeat the heron-witch before she devours her loved ones. As years pass, the eternally youthful Valentina runs into her share of villains, from vampires to the Headmaster (aka the lord of Death’s dominion) at neighboring Bleak Academy. Vampires, in particular, become a constant presence, flocking to the sunless otherland and establishing Night London. Some of the book’s tales spotlight other characters (though Valentina pops up in each one). There’s Mrs. Senko, a Bleak Academy teacher who’s bizarrely fascinated by a creature living in her gardens. Elsewhere, Evdeniya Kinjirovna Kaneko needs help when her scientist/engineer parents disappear after building the humming, greenish-glowing “thing that should not be.” Meanwhile, the Headmaster shows Valentina a dreadful vision of a “cursed land…hopeless, lifeless, cold, and grey”—a broken, terrifying world whose “substance” may seep into other places or into people’s souls. It’s hardly surprising that Valentina sets her sights on the wicked Headmaster and his powerful sorcery.
Moran’s meticulous worldbuilding gives this deliberately paced tale a distinctive style. Although specifics on characters’ surroundings are minimal, the abstract details sometimes come across as gleefully ominous. For example, the “geographically disconnected” otherland, aside from designated places like Fortitude and Bleak Academy, teems with areas collectively called “the Outside.” The Outside is nothingness and chaos, and it’s divided into even more unnerving parts—the low, the near, the far, and the deep. In addition, dialogue exchanges, rather than action, constitute much of the story, whether characters converse in a dream or casually discuss murdering one another. “I still think about killing you sometimes,” Valentina tells one player matter-of-factly. Still, the remarkable Sosunovs lead a sublime cast. Their time-defying abilities allow Valentina to dream-meet her whip-smart multi-great-granddaughter Aprosinya. This relative, who appears throughout the novel in and out of dreams, gets a visit from her mother when she’s pregnant with Aprosinya. Moran further enhances this story with memorable imagery. The heron-witch, in the waking world, crawls through a window more like a worm than a bird, and Valentina uses a magical knife to turn a skeleton into a flesh-and-blood comrade with not-quite-human eyes. In the same vein, Moyer and Bilibin’s pristine artworks open each chapter, showing such details as the Headmaster’s shockingly eerie star-scape eyes and a lovable, swimming seal. As the story progresses, the characters and plot evolve. Valentina starts her own family, and the Industrial Revolution, for better or worse, makes its way to the otherland. The open ending works wonderfully, whether or not the author has a series in mind.
A stellar cast headlines this engrossing, otherworldly tale.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 598
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
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
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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