A fantasy tale that hums with magic and originality, featuring extensive worldbuilding and a compelling cast of...
Linkhart’s debut novel is set in a reimagined 1927 Chicago, where a series of Tarot-themed murders challenges a magical organization of knights that defends the city.
A stage-setting introduction briefly summarizes the cultural landscape of this novel’s version of 1920s America: There’s no racial segregation, Indigenous majorities administer 13 provinces, and traditional religions are still practiced from multiple African kingdoms colonizing the New World. The Great War recently devastated the globe with “the first full-scale use of magic.” Prohibition is in full swing, and the glamour of jazz and flappers beckons from behind closed doors. In this setting, Bernice Chandler, a knight of the Order of Joan, is summoned to investigate a series of gruesome murders that radiate “the oozing black touch of terrible magics and violence.” She’s assigned a cop partner, Det. Jack Donovan, and the two begin to work the demonic cases while hiding their respective troubled histories. On the night before the first killing, for instance, Bernice was visited by a “portentous” vision of an angel. She escaped an institution in her youth, and she begins to see its nefarious head, Doctor Werner, lurking around the city. She gets unlikely aid from Valentino “Tino” Morandi, a cursed, bootlegging demi-demon who’s obliged by the Order to assist on the case, and he can help rid her of her problem—for a price. As these three characters precariously undertake professional relationships, the action propels them toward a dramatic climax that threatens to consume the city.
The plot maintains punchy pacing in alternating sections from its main characters’ third-person perspectives; symbolic illustrations indicate when the point of view changes. Readers will find themselves easily drawn into this sturdily built world, and they’ll find the inner workings of the all-female Order and their reluctant collaboration with traditional law enforcement to be particularly intriguing. The knights—or “Joanies,” as Tino and his associates call them—are each equipped with the Three Sisters (a chain of hawthorn, rowan, and holly), silver chains, and a sword, and if that isn’t enough, Bernice also carries a .38 strapped to her thigh. The knights also carry Optical Oil—an “applied alchemy” that reveals the dark symbols used to enact the ritualistic killings. Such devices assist in grounding the story’s magical elements in procedure and neatly contrast with Tino’s demi-demon abilities. The Joanies are supported by the Order of Catherine (or “Cathies”), who maintain the extensive Archives on history and magic. The intricate workforce features diverse characters who display genuine camaraderie in their hierarchical structures. Outside of her demanding job, Bernice lives with Lula, a nonmagical, churchgoing woman who shows more than a passing interest in Bernice’s work with the Order. Although the book is somewhat lengthy at more than 400 pages, the pace never drags, as it effortlessly mixes genres to propel the story forward. In this first title in the Degrees of Magic series, Linkhart ably balances character development with intricate plotting, which will make readers look forward to the next installment.
A fantasy tale that hums with magic and originality, featuring extensive worldbuilding and a compelling cast of ne'er-do-wells.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798348153519
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Goblin Booth Productions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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