An enchanting story with messages of empathy and appreciation for nature.
Franks offers a fairytale fantasy led by a tiny, helpful adventurer and her enchanted canine companion.
In the ancient Crooked Forest live fairies, trolls, and small, forest-keeping folk called Shuns, first introduced in the author’s prolific children’s fantasy series Corky Tails. Here, a Shun named Willow, a hero-in-the-making, is accompanied by her companion and steed, Sir Gyzmo, a talking fairy dog wearing a saddle and halter woven from columbine, lavender, ferns, and coyote willow. (The text is rich in descriptive appreciation for growing things.) Loosely structured, interconnected vignettes include the saga of Willow’s long-lost mother, Luna, the victim of human sheep farmer Aidan’s cruelty; she’s magically transported by a fairy to a place of healing “where time was no longer measured.” Aidan features, too, in the plight of his wife, Wynter; he’s heartbroken to learn that he caused the drought that nearly destroyed her village. Willow teaches Wynter herbal and flower lore, leading to lush descriptions of snowdrops, wild garlic in “a carpet of wide green leaves,” dandelion and acorn tea, and an abundance of “meadowsweet, coltsfoot, honeysuckle, and bramble.” In another vignette, Willow helps an arrogant, 3,000-year-old troll understand the importance of being his “true self.” The author shows readers the comically hideous troll’s vulnerability in his yearning for a companion and his concern over a way of life endangered by human settlers cutting their way into the forest. Throughout, the author’s themes resonate: respect for nature and the importance of husbanding its resources, perseverance, kindness toward others, and forgiveness. Readers unacquainted with the events in the author’s first series installment, The Crooked Forest: Legacy of the Holey Stone(2021), will find more clarity if they start with it, although numerous flashbacks to previous events in this volume help, as does the work’s fairy-tale charm, melded with real-life concerns and character-building messages.
An enchanting story with messages of empathy and appreciation for nature.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 978-1669874966
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Xlibris US
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
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