A savage YA read filled with fish men, cutting wit, and supernatural gore.
The first volume of a paranormal horror series delivers a tale about a New England town in the grip of a monstrous cult.
Fourteen-year-old Abigail Thorndike, of Arkham, Massachusetts, lives on the rich side of town. As September arrives, she’s set to enter the prestigious Arkham Academy. Joining Abby will be her best friends, Sindy Endicott and Nate Baxter. As a final summer bash, the trio attends a carnival. There, they encounter a clique of the town’s rich and powerful scions—Bryce Coffin, Charity Duckworth, and Eleazar Grant—among others. Surprisingly, the cool kids allow Abby and her friends to tag along as they raise a ruckus inside the carnival. Later, as Abby is pressured to drink alcohol, her head begins pounding. She escapes the scene only to end up in a mirrored fun house. Inside, she sees nightmare versions of herself before blacking out from intense pain. She wakes up at home in bed and has little choice but to leave for her first day at Arkham Academy. She continues to experience “dizziness and loathing,” but this time after blacking out, she awakens to find the school infested with vile, disc-mouthed fish men. These fearsome creatures have “spines and fins sprouted in irregular patches” across their exposed skin, “colorless and milky” eyes, and “ragged and bloody red” gills. Robinson (The Last Son of Ahriman, 2015, etc.) and Rodriguez (Skylanders: Light in the Dark, 2016) make superb use of author H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional town of Arkham as well as the Deep Ones (anthropoid fish). Commentary on class divisions is plentiful because Nate’s family lives across town, and he and his father work as groundskeepers for the wealthy families. Igniting this page-turner, however, is the mystery behind the Daughters of Arkham, a charitable organization of blue-blooded women, most of whom seem to be widows. While teen drama engulfs Abby, she’s also cursed as the only one who can see Arkham’s fish men. And though the characters are young adults, their liberal use of words like “slut” marks this story for older teens. The end cleverly wraps around an early detail, broadening the saga for its next installment.
A savage YA read filled with fish men, cutting wit, and supernatural gore.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9895744-1-9
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Th3rd World Studios
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.
Things are about to get bloody for a group of Charleston housewives.
In 1988, the scariest thing in former nurse Patricia Campbell’s life is showing up to book club, since she hasn’t read the book. It’s hard to get any reading done between raising two kids, Blue and Korey, picking up after her husband, Carter, a psychiatrist, and taking care of her live-in mother-in-law, Miss Mary, who seems to have dementia. It doesn’t help that the books chosen by the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant are just plain boring. But when fellow book-club member Kitty gives Patricia a gloriously trashy true-crime novel, Patricia is instantly hooked, and soon she’s attending a very different kind of book club with Kitty and her friends Grace, Slick, and Maryellen. She has a full plate at home, but Patricia values her new friendships and still longs for a bit of excitement. When James Harris moves in down the street, the women are intrigued. Who is this handsome night owl, and why does Miss Mary insist that she knows him? A series of horrific events stretches Patricia’s nerves and her Southern civility to the breaking point. (A skin-crawling scene involving a horde of rats is a standout.) She just knows James is up to no good, but getting anyone to believe her is a Sisyphean feat. After all, she’s just a housewife. Hendrix juxtaposes the hypnotic mundanity of suburbia (which has a few dark underpinnings of its own) against an insidious evil that has taken root in Patricia’s insular neighborhood. It’s gratifying to see her grow from someone who apologizes for apologizing to a fiercely brave woman determined to do the right thing—hopefully with the help of her friends. Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, 2018, etc.) cleverly sprinkles in nods to well-established vampire lore, and the fact that he’s a master at conjuring heady 1990s nostalgia is just the icing on what is his best book yet.
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68369-143-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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