A fantasy with inventive concepts and a bold construction.
This fantasy debut features a kingdom of stone elementals and a quest to undo a spell that caused a race to vanish.
In 1985, Ivyssa practices with her bow and arrows in the “Ash Point Forrest” of Arbouroth, a region of Azulyria. The 15-year-old Hedarian girl would rather roughhouse than follow gentle pursuits, like cross-stitching. When fiery pain suddenly erupts across her face, she knows she’s been chosen by the goddess Octrisia as her realm’s next ruler, the Queen of Swords. She must now find the region’s Masculirum, the knight who will offer her protection and counsel for the duration of her reign, and then begin training under the current Queen, Azurina Silvera. During her search, Ivyssa encounters villagers conducting an Illumination Ceremony that will test 10-year-old Teaken’s elemental stone-moving powers. But her interruption of the ritual distracts Teaken. He launches the stone with his mind, hitting his mother and killing her. As Teaken’s father consoles him, at least one person swears vengeance on Ivyssa. Later, as Queen, she meets a deranged woman who recites an ancient spell to turn her into stone. But the spell is spoken incorrectly, and all living creatures in Azulyria turn to stone and cause the land to sink. Thirty-four years later, these events shatter the life of former FBI agent Alexandra Nealy. Spacek’s series opener begins ostensibly as a medieval-ish fantasy, with detailed worldbuilding surrounding both Ivyssa and Teaken, before jumping several decades to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yet there are early clues regarding this twist, like Ivyssa’s mention that overseas nations have telephones. Ivyssa also uses careworn phrases like “cry me a river” and “off your rocker,” which dissipate the fantasy mood. Occasionally, excellent prose carries readers directly into the conflict in Azulyria (“Dropping from the churning vortex, a flood of flashing ribbons fell, rotating together in a tube of celestial brilliance”). Overall, the modern setting offers more dialogue while the Azulyria-set scenes sometimes suffer from telling rather than showing the story. But after introducing the Nealy sisters, Alex and Erika, and the seductive Jared Kingston, Alex’s love interest, the author continues taking refreshing narrative risks.
A fantasy with inventive concepts and a bold construction.Pub Date: April 8, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-63-000972-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 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.
