An enthralling epic of mortals, immortals, and endless battles.
In Feuerstack’s debut fantasy series-starter, angels and demons wage war for millennia to win dominance over Earth.
Brothers God and Satan, after conquering the Titans together, now fight each other for control of the overlapping Celestial and Mortal Realms. This epic novel tells a story of thousands of years on Earth, primarily through the lives of angel Zinc and demon Schizophrenia, or “Schitz.” They’re entirely different types of students at their respective celestial schools: Schitz struggles to do well, unlike Zinc, who’s the teacher’s pet. However, in combat, the two are equally formidable. Per God and Satan’s signed agreement, angels and demons can only battle where mortals are also at war—or immersed in “war-like violence.” The celestial beings possess humans’ bodies when they fight; as such, Zinc and Schitz join others of their kind in conflicts throughout the world and its history. Not all enemies, however, are on opposing sides; Zinc and Schitz also suffer treachery and betrayals from within their own ranks. Despite this novel’s massive scope, Feuerstack wisely simplifies the plot; throughout, celestial beings are either fighting or preparing to do so. At the same time, he makes sure that Zinc and Schitz are fully developed characters, who experience love and grief. They do atrocious things, as well, and not just when they’re at war. Although the author takes his subject matter seriously, the cast boasts gleefully flashy character names; most angels are named for chemical elements, such as Uranium, and demons are named after a signature disease or disorder, which they’re each responsible for cultivating among humans, such as Mumps or Vertigo. This richly historical narrative takes readers from the land of the Babylonians to the New World, but it’s nowhere near completion in this volume, which leaves plenty of character secrets to be unveiled in a sequel. Tedmon’s stellar artwork mostly comprises razor-sharp black-and-white illustrations of weaponry, though her sublime portraits of characters, such as angel Hydrogen, effectively grace full pages.
An enthralling epic of mortals, immortals, and endless battles.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-956019-27-8
Page Count: 588
Publisher: DartFrog Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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