A sprightly, engaging paranormal series installment with magic-infused action and character evolution.
Armed with supernatural skills and new allies, a man sets out to rescue his lover from the land of the dead in this sixth volume of an urban fantasy series.
After surviving a harrowing ordeal, Laurence Riley and Quentin d’Arcy decide to leave London for sunny San Diego, where they first met. But Quentin’s psychokinesis turns his recurring nightmares into rather destructive affairs. To ease his stress, the couple first take a shorter flight to New York City and grab a hotel just as a blizzard hits. The West Coast can wait; they’ll just enjoy themselves and each other until the weather lets up. But when the two men briefly separate, a shadowy monster suddenly attacks and devours Quentin, who winds up in Otherworld—the land of the dead. Getting back to his lover necessitates Quentin making a bargain with Arawn, the God of the Dead. Arawn merely wants Quentin to kill fairy king Gwyn ap Nudd, something that the deity, for whatever reason, can’t do. Arawn pairs Quentin with a Hunter to guide him; surprisingly, it’s Eric, Laurence’s deceased father, who’s capable of magic like his son. Back in the real world, Laurence’s psychic vision shows him Quentin’s apparent demise. Luckily, Laurence has just made some new friends, including a necromancer, who have the know-how to glean where Quentin is and devise a plan for bringing him home. But even if they can make their way to Otherworld, they’ll still likely have to face Gwyn, whose power may be greater than whatever Laurence, Quentin, and the others can throw at him.
While Faulkner introduces new threats for each installment, numerous story threads flow throughout this series. In previous entries, for example, Quentin’s wicked father has been a central character. In this book, Quentin is tormented by the man’s past abuse, and he fears that he has darkness in himself as well. The highlighted romance likewise progresses, as the two lovers become more comfortable with each other and their increasing sexual appetites. While a generally somber tone blankets this series, Book 6 sports a more comedic approach, though it’s markedly understated. For starters, Quentin must suffer Eric’s string of delightfully banal dad jokes, including why two elephants can’t go for a swim together: “Because they’ve only got one pair of trunks!” But the main plot comes across as a frenzied, almost haphazard plan to defeat Gwyn and save Quentin. The scheme entails ever changing theories; someone’s power that no one can adequately explain (“He can, like…I dunno. Kill himself at will, kinda”); and Eric’s strategy that he derives from “Dungeons & Dragons.” The peril nevertheless takes center stage as the good guys face off against a formidable foe and his dark, vicious army and a few characters are not what they appear to be. Best of all, Laurence and Quentin’s passionate relationship continues to drive the series, showcasing a profound, unwavering love even if the former seems perpetually primed for sex. The final act is a superpowered battle resulting in deaths and near deaths, culminating in an ending that once again teases the next volume.
A sprightly, engaging paranormal series installment with magic-infused action and character evolution.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-912349-16-6
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Lunar Beagle Limited
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2022
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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