Fun and clever, but decidedly sloppier than it should be.
In the final installment of a trilogy, a guard captain turned hero plots the final confrontation with an evil sorcerer seeking divinity.
The Witch-king of Hakkia gathers an army of soldiers, mercenaries, vampires, and beasts brutally altered by magic, intending to bring the rebellious kingdoms of the destroyed Silver Empire to heel. He also prepares for an elaborate, painful ritual that will transform him into a demigod and bring his patron, Hastur the Shepherd God, into the physical world. Meanwhile, the former imperial guard captain Kagen the Damned helps rally a response and stop the ritual, while his brothers, Jheklan and Faulker, go on a dangerous journey into the Winterwilds to free the world’s last dragon, Fabeldyr, the imprisoned and tortured source of all the world’s magic. The ending, as armies clash, the ritual advances, and divine and monstrous beings enter our reality, goes pretty much as anyone who reads or watches fantasy would expect, although the clarification of the Witch-king’s identity is a nice twist. But, like the previous books, this one could have used a more rigorous editor. Characters behave inconsistently. It's not entirely clear whether the Witch-king’s ultimate goal is to reestablish an empire, conquer all of reality, or shatter all of reality—he says different things at different times. Several plot threads prove to be dead ends; the magic books won at such great cost in the last volume, Son of the Poison Rose (2023), end up being of little utility. Other aspects are never completely explained, possibly by design? We never learn if Kagen is truly damned; it’s heavily suggested that there might be another meaning to his gods turning their backs to him in Book 1, Kagen the Damned (2022), plus his interactions with other beings seem to convey blessing, not damnation, but it’s not fully explained. The book, and the series as a whole, offers an intriguing mashup of epic fantasy and cosmic horror lore and tropes, exciting action sequences, and interesting, sympathetic characters. But the potential to be a tighter work is clearly there, if only the time and the effort had been put in.
Fun and clever, but decidedly sloppier than it should be.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781250892638
Page Count: 592
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.
This is wizard Harry Dresden’s yearlong mourning period for Karrin Murphy, the woman he loved.
If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series, then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world, thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t), sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child, lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship, bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight, and, for the length of an entire book, thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy, the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner, friend, and, after a slow burn across many books, lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army, and Harry is doing his best to confront the monsters, dark magic, and anti-supernatural prejudice running wild amid the slowly rebuilding city. He’s also trying to save his half brother Thomas from two different death sentences, train a new apprentice, and juggle a relationship with Thomas’ half sister Lara, the dangerously seductive vampire Queen Mab is forcing him to marry. But he’s doing all this while nearly crushed by grief that threatens his judgment and disturbs his control over his magical powers. Butcher really makes you feel the dark, depressive state Harry exists in as well as the effect it’s having on his friends. Despite all that happens in it, this book is a pause as well as a setup for the series’ planned conclusion, an epic conflict with the eldritch creatures known as “the Outsiders.” It’s a tough, redemptive pause that could be a real drag, but thankfully, it’s not, because Butcher shows balance, too: Even as the crises pile up, so do the help and goodwill from unexpected sources.
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593199336
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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