Tensions are high and it’s anybody’s guess whether Syney will live long enough to unseat the scheming queen.
Once Collins gets the plot rolling in her YA fantasy debut, it’s almost nonstop peril for her young heroine.
Even though she’s relatable, it takes a while to get to know teenage Syney Andrews, a changeling from the Altera Realm who was dropped into modern-day America as an infant. Forced to run for her life, she has to pause to catch her breath; when she stumbles back into Altera and discovers she’s meant to unseat the ruling queen, she has the courage, but not the know-how, to take her rightful place. Syney has to be guided by other characters who are just as inherently flawed as she is. Just like real-world teens and the adults around them, they try hard—except when they blow off their responsibilities. Allies in Altera manage to steer Syney closer to the queenship, but she makes a tangled, near-hopeless mess of her own romantic liaisons along the way, nearly ruining a few friendships while she’s at it. Collins’ basic ingredients—werewolves, vampires, feuding houses—will be familiar to seasoned readers, but she’s so willing to endanger her main characters that the plot never feels stale or recycled. She’s also not above an occasional wink and nod, as with Syney’s initial reaction to finding out vampires exist: “Do they sparkle?” Though Collins glosses over an exploration of Syney’s grief at the loss of her family, the story approaches a rabbit hole of depression: “She looked like nothing was wrong, all clean and refreshed, but underneath the surface she was still broken.” Magic creates some miraculous fixes, but Syney and her confidantes can never fully escape the consequences of their choices. The only speed bump to readers losing themselves in these characters is the narrative’s tendency to occasionally leave out words or substitute near-homophones, like flare for flair and depraved for deprived. Nevertheless, Collins’ writing is smooth enough to paint a vibrant picture as it draws readers into Altera and Syney’s complicated new life.
Tensions are high and it’s anybody’s guess whether Syney will live long enough to unseat the scheming queen.Pub Date: May 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482590944
Page Count: 452
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2013
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
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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