An entertaining urban fantasy.
Bushnell’s third novel blends an atmospheric supernatural mystery with an intriguing exploration of gender identity.
In 1909 Boston, 17-year-old Artie Quick works as a salesgirl in Filene's Tunnel Bargain Basement, the recently opened overflow shop. But on Wednesday evenings she disguises herself as a man, slicking back her cropped black hair with pomade filched from the men's counter and wearing her estranged brother Zeb’s old suit, to attend Professor Winchell’s course on Criminal Investigation at the YMCA’s Evening Institute for Young Men. Although Winchell, a police detective, easily outs Artie after the first class, he is impressed by her “keen investigative mind” and refuses to expel his bright student. Eager to practice what she has learned, Artie and her friend Theodore, an eccentric upper-class bachelor and student of magic, head to Boston Common to investigate a mysterious scream heard the previous evening. When they stop an attempted abduction of a young woman and Artie’s class is abruptly canceled, the duo probe further into a series of unsolved kidnappings and gradually uncover a malevolent conspiracy that leads from City Hall to an abandoned subway tunnel construction site that may house an ancient evil. Bushnell keeps his fantastical elements light but believable, focusing instead on the affectionate (but not romantic or sexual) friendship between Artie and Theodore, two appealing social misfits who together “navigate the world better than either of them could alone.” Also compelling is Artie’s gradual recognition of her real self (“not exactly a man, but maybe something other than a girl”) as she grows more comfortable in her suit and enjoys the freedom it allows. Unfortunately, the abrupt deus ex machina ending undermines Artie’s budding agency and gives the impression the author didn't know how to finish his novel.
An entertaining urban fantasy.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781685890322
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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