A strange, inventive tale that evolves into a challenging and rewarding odyssey.
In Miller’s novel, a disaffected teenager receives a bizarre power that may be the key to changing her grim reality.
Shay Garner is a 17-year-old living in a hostile world. At home, she must contend with her abusive, alcohol-addictedmother, who hurls insults but never offers love or support. At school, with her two best friends, Opal and Santana,she has joined an after-school group to work on community service, but all three girls agree that petitions and picking up garbage will do nothing to reverse the environmental disasters and extreme poverty around their home of San Jose, California. “Every single moment, even this one, is a gift,” Shay thinks, adding, “No part of her believes that statement fully.” However, an unbelievable gift does, in fact, come Shay’s way. An odd figure named Corvus P. Capra with mechanical pincers for hands saves her from a man harassing her in the street; he then wordlessly offers her a black clamshell, which displays messages so that he can communicate with her. The item also gives its new owner the ability to control animals with her mind. Shay’s disbelief quickly gives way to amazement, and then a flurry of questions, as she realizes that she can compel cockroaches, spiders, cats, and dogs to follow her orders with merely a thought. Shay trains with Corvus at night, but he remains aloof about the power’s ultimate purpose: “Time is little,” he tells her. “Few questions, fine, okay. Many, not good. It is pesky.” As her abilities grow, she finds herself able to manipulate zoo animals and even people. Shay withdraws from the people close to her, just as Corvus finally reveals his intentions to use the power to stave off an environmental disaster. However, before long, she and her friends set off down a strange path to understanding what it really means to change the world.
Miller’s heavily philosophical approach doesn’t shy away from dark themes, violence, or language. The novel’s detached tone quickly alerts readers to the deadly serious stakes, even as some wacky plot elements emerge; the reveal of what Corvus truly is, for example, seems too bizarre to be believed, but somehow feels logical. Shay’s sheer intelligence will win readers over early; the probing questions she asks about her new powers make her feel genuine, while also pushing at the limits of the unusual situation. There’s a pervasive sense of despair that Miller renders beautifully, and it places readers squarely into the mindset of young people who feel powerless to fix problems, either at home or in the world at large. The novel’s excellent twist is that when they get power, it only creates more perplexing questions with unclear solutions: “There is a growing hollowness beneath it,” Shay thinks after one victory, “a sense of incompletion.” The protagonist’s story feels light-years from the typical hero’s journey, consistently focusing on more existential themes—and the result is something unusually unsettling and unforgettable.
A strange, inventive tale that evolves into a challenging and rewarding odyssey.Pub Date: June 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798284208939
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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