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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
