A beguiling fable that’s full of rich whimsy with a thoughtful bite.
Mysterious radio broadcasts from the past are among the spooky goings-on roiling a corner of the Missouri Ozarks in this fantasy.
Tall’s novel centers on KSR, a pirate radio station whose Saturday-night broadcasts in the vicinity of Joplin, Missouri, feature uncannily accurate present-day weather forecasts, hit-parade songs, St. Louis Cardinals games from the 1960s, sermons of the long-dead Rev. Franklin L. Hewitt from the 1930s, and “air traffic control for a mysterious WWII airfield.” Federal agencies have tried and failed to locate and silence the station, whose signal seems to emanate from an area called the Spirit Valley, which includes an abandoned airstrip, the village of West Bobcat, a rain tank that amplifies a disembodied voice, a creepy forest, and invisible spirit beings known as Nunnehi in Cherokee legend. Tall’s narrative wanders back and forth over decades, telling the loosely integrated stories of characters around the Spirit Valley. They include Charles J. Howell, a Cherokee man who has visions of a spectral old man; his buddy E.J., who hires on a slate of untalented local musicians to scare tourists from his diner; Jake, a government paranormal investigator; Sylvie T., a teenage mind reader; Merlie, an unhoused woman in New York City who picks up KSR on her radio and is drawn to West Bobcat; and even a rooster. Tall’s yarn enfolds readers in a world of magical realism where supernatural occurrences and astral adventures are a prosaic part of life; one plangent arc follows the Rev. Franklin’s ghostly wanderings after his death in 1934, complete with socially awkward encounters with the living. Tall’s writing features colorful characters who stay grounded amid the supernaturalism and sly humor and prose whose deadpan matter-of-factness shades into poetry: “The ghosts were crazy in a big city. They paced overhead across long hallways; they lurked in laundry rooms and cried ‘Help me!’ They stared through walls and knew what you were doing.” The result is a fun tall tale that’s also a resonant meditation on the magic of an iconic American landscape.
A beguiling fable that’s full of rich whimsy with a thoughtful bite.Pub Date: June 3, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-8339-7986-0
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
A freewheeling, action-packed fantasy with a dash of romance.
Kova offers a fantasy novel set beyond the Nightgale Mountains in the walled fortress of Vinguard where citizens live in fear of the next deadly dragon attack.
Vinguard’s residents are always on guard against the threat of dragons, but they must watch more than just the skies. Living among them, hiding in plain sight, are the “dragon cursed”—people who, at any moment, may transform into terrifying winged beasts and destroy the city from within. For most of Isola Thaz’s life, she’s been told she’s the reincarnated savior of Vinguard. But just as she begins to suspect that she may be dragon cursed, she’s tossed into Vinguard’s Tribunal—a contest in which every 18-year-old competes in tests of skill and might to separate loyal citizens from the dragon cursed. As she’s sequestered for this rite of passage, Isola hesitantly allies herself with a handsome fellow competitor named Lucan. However, as the teens face such trials as fire-breathing automatons (“The silver beast comes to life with a swing. Its claws shear through the dim light”), starvation, and actual dragons while unarmed, Isola begins to feel that Vinguard’s traditions come at a cost that’s too steep. Meanwhile, Vicar Darius, Lucan’s father and the leader of Vinguard’s shadowy theocracy, the Creed, is desperate to take Isola’s powers for himself—and, to that end, he puts her into increasingly tortuous situations. However, neither he, nor Isola’s teenage rivals, are very compelling antagonists; instead, they come across as caricatures of cruelty. Still, the novel is fast-paced and action-oriented with a punchy prose that prioritizes movement over fantasy aesthetics. A sometimes-fraught romance between Isola and Lucan slowly blooms, but Isola’s relationship with her family forms the true emotional core of the narrative. Although the worldbuilding in fairly simple, the story sets up a massive mystery that promises big payoffs in a potential future installment.
A freewheeling, action-packed fantasy with a dash of romance.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781649377838
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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