Ash combines an array of fantasy concepts in a rousing new series entry.
Ash’s third volume of the ELI Chronicles sees animals attacking humans and vampires.
In 2041, Ruby Spencer is a vampire who acts as The Tether, whose duty is to “bring safety, balance, and harmony to every living thing in the world and universe.” Her blood can heal people, but it turns them into vampires, so she declined to cure first lady Irene Unger who was suffering from stage 4 ovarian cancer. Desperate for a cure, President Will Unger pardoned imprisoned “dark science deviant” Emory Bradshaw, who genetically crossed Irene with a cancer-proof naked mole-rat; the president then asks Ruby to end the resulting monstrous hybrid's suffering. However, the president feels betrayed for her refusal to cure his wife, so he helps Emory and former Russian ruler Vladimir Volkov kidnap her and bring her to a Siberian lab, where they plan to use “genetically enhanced wolf venom” to create new hybrids. Meanwhile, on the planet Athanasia, alpha wolf Lykos plans for the Turning Point, when animals everywhere will attack human and vampire “uprights”; it goes into effect on the planet Besto Polus, under the leadership of the female wolf Filtiarn. Back on Earth, Ruby’s husband, Clay, and their 9-year-old daughter, Gabby, witness coyote and bird attacks. And whose side will the devious Zagan Glissendorf join now that he’s limited to a ghostly form after previous novels’ events? Ash is a fearless author who holds little back in terms of imagination and worldbuilding. Her formidable vision holds together seemingly disparate elements, such as vampires and alien worlds, and it certainly helps that she winks frequently at her readers. There’s a line, for example, about how Filtiarn’s rivals’ “penises had been sun-dried” and “given to the female pups as chews” that’s as inspired as it is bizarre. Overall, the narrative functions as a rallying cry for animal rights, but it’s also a study of transformation. Major characters become new beings for excitement’s sake while Zagan’s arc is an earnest affair of the heart. Seasoned genre fans will be impressed by how the author balances action, gore, and heart in this volume.
Ash combines an array of fantasy concepts in a rousing new series entry.Pub Date: May 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73487-133-3
Page Count: 319
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2020
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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