An engaging and energetically written literary horror story that speaks up for animals.
In this fantasy thriller, three friends visit the home of their favorite writer, unaware of the twisted legacy awaiting them.
John Eamon Buckley grew up with an agoraphobic father in rural Idaho. He survived his bitter childhood thanks to the writings of E.B. Addington, the beloved author of Winterset Hollow and the creator of characters like Runnymeade Rabbit and Flackwell Frog. Now, grown-up Eamon and his friends Mark and Caroline have embarked on a pilgrimage to Addington Isle, off the coast of West Rock, Washington. Along with several other fans, Eamon and company take a boat to the island and view the deceased author’s estate and beautiful grounds. Eamon hopes to at least see a rabbit, so the friends explore and find an elaborate hedge maze. They next see lantern light in the supposedly empty manor’s windows. But no oddities can prepare them for Runnymeade Rabbit himself, who steps from the manor and invites the group inside. The characters Flackwell Frog and Phineas Fox are also present, wearing clothes and able to speak, just like in the book. The hosts offer games and a feast to celebrate Addington’s fictional Barley Day. But as the evening proceeds, Eamon notices a sour tinge in the air. Runnymeade eventually announces: “It’s time for the hunt.” Durham takes a blackly humorous swipe at childhood nostalgia, namely readers still enamored with their copies of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit. A peek through Addington’s history reveals a family obsessed with wealth and trophies, especially animal carcasses, which decorate the manor. The mystery of why Eamon received a strange summons to the island is deftly teased throughout. Durham’s gleeful, human-hunting villains steal most of the scenes, as when Flackwell tries to lure their prey by saying, “I’ve brought sandwiches!” The prose, while always striving to reveal character depth, runs a bit purple, as in the line “Nothing seemed to quell the firestorm of questions that was clouding his view and pummeling his eardrums and plugging his throat with thick, black ash.” Violence never overshadows the tale’s intriguing explorations of legacy and duty.
An engaging and energetically written literary horror story that speaks up for animals.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62586-208-2
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Credo House Publishers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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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