A compelling first book in a new fantasy series will leave readers wanting more.
A courtesan uses her power of intuition to save a Hyhborn immortal.
After growing up in an orphanage, Calista made a deal with Claude, the Baron of Archwood. In exchange for his protection and a place in his court, Calista agrees to use her magical abilities to gather information for him. Her intuition is so powerful that she's compelled to follow its directives, and she can also divine a person’s future by touching them, skills unusual in a lowborn human. Calista values the safety and security of this arrangement even though she has the uneasy feeling that her skills have made her a pawn in a political game she doesn’t understand. One night, she overhears a strange conversation about an immortal being in trouble, and her intuition forces her to investigate. Calista finds Thorne, the Prince of Vytrus and right hand of King Euros, being tortured and drained of blood to be sold on the black market for use in illegal bone magic. She saves him and becomes his lover and companion for his time in Archwood. Thorne reveals that the king has sent him to deliver a message to Claude about the dangers facing the city: Archwood is being targeted by a rebel faction of lowborns, and the King and other Hyhborn immortals are considering destroying the city rather than involve themselves in a messy human conflict. Armentrout delivers a standard palace intrigue plot, but the characters and story are sexy and compelling. Thorne is more mysterious and opaque compared to Calista, who has a well-developed arc. She abandons her passive acceptance of her circumstances and tries to uncover the truth about her past and her magical abilities, but she fears the truth will pit her against Thorne as malevolent forces threaten the city.
A compelling first book in a new fantasy series will leave readers wanting more.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781250750198
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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