An offbeat but underexplained fantasy-quest story.
A highly illustrated, allegorical fantasy novel about loss and isolation.
It is time for a new Guardian in the realm. Elder Rā-alta has chosen her former friend, now a recluse farmer, F’ala to keep the chosen one safe until she is able to awaken into her role of Guardian. Now it is up to F’ala, used to being scorned for her unusual freckles, to raise the pale-skinned Mi’hal’ē and to keep her safe from those that will challenge her before she’s ready—even if that means keeping her from exploring the rest of the world and from knowing what, and who, she truly is. Mi’hal’ē looks and acts differently than anyone else she knows, and she just wants to find her own place in life. But because she’s forbidden to go past the nearby fields, there’s no way she’ll ever find out where she fits in. Mi’hal’ē must travel far further than she ever thought possible to discover the secrets of her past and her destiny. Quayle, the author of Look Left, Walk Green (2017), has created her own language to fit the world of her unusual fantasy-quest story, but it’s hard to get a true sense of place when so many of the words that characters use are inadequately explained. The author’s fine pen-and-ink illustrations will give readers a clearer idea of what the doglike humanoid characters look like, which is desperately needed; she also includes a pronunciation guide and a map. It’s clear that Quayle has put a lot of work into creating her wide-ranging and highly original world, but there’s a disconnect between the author and the audience; she writes as though readers already know everything about the fantastical setting. In a closing note, she reveals that her book is meant to be an allegory for mental illness and isolation, and she does strongly and clearly stress this theme throughout the book.
An offbeat but underexplained fantasy-quest story. (maps, pronunciation guide)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-56598-9
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: April 27, 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
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