An interplanetary fantasy adventure that’s riveting even when it meanders.
An Elf-hybrid’s investigation into suspicious activity lands her in a variety of dangers in Parker’s fantasy series opener.
Lady Alexin Dumwalt, the Keeper of the Keys, oversees a tribute in gold offered every 4,000 years. It goes to the powerful Mentors, who have allowedthe Elves to stay in their world of Eledon after they were forced to leave Earth.But now the Mentors want their tribute, which they’ve taken to calling the Epsilon Account, 244 years early. Unsurprisingly, the Elves don’t have the full amount, and Alex, an eclectic mix of Water Elf, Titan, and mortal, looks closely at the Mentors’ atypical behavior. Her investigation takes some unexpected turns, from a sudden death to Alex’s trip to Oltria, another Elf-populated planet. She runs into assorted troubles, including enemies holding her captive, trying to kill her, or assaulting her. The military-trained Water Elf can easily take down foes (“I panted hard, catching my breath as I surveyed the damage. All four men were down on the floor, unconscious. Did I do too much?”), but stopping the sinister plan involving the Elves’ gold will take considerably greater effort. Parker’s hero is simply outstanding. Alex begins this first installment of the author’s fantasy series in the mortal world, where she’s been exiled, working as a fashion model. She comes with a dense backstory, which Parker delivers concisely. While the story boasts a terrific setup, the investigation gets a bit lost in the shuffle of Alex’s (mis)adventures; she befriends another potential Keeper, stumbles into romance, and undergoes shuttle-pilot training in sequences that have little or nothing to do with the titular account. Still, it’s a delight to watch the Elfin hero overcome precarious circumstances using her wiles and her combat skills. Even far away from Eledon and without ready access to her magical Keys or allies, the cheer-worthy protagonist triumphs time and time again.
An interplanetary fantasy adventure that’s riveting even when it meanders.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2023
ISBN: 979-8861689618
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
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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