A gripping, well-paced first installment with a resourceful female lead.
A fantasy in which a princess must save the lives of her kingdom’s rivals.
As this first book in the author’s Chronicles of Áitarbith series opens, an unassuming young peasant woman named Anita is working as a drudge in the kitchens of Hårbørgen Palace on a day when the whole of the House of Hårbørgen, rulers of the kingdom of Cinnae, are gathered for supper. This cast of characters includes both “beautiful but sullen” Prince Tensso, heir to the throne, and his older half brother, Lord Svensso, general of Cinnae’s eastern armies. Anita’s proximity to the banquet table was planned. Her name is actually Ata, born to unmarried parents and the niece of Addai, ruler of Cinnae’s great rival, the kingdom of Pandi. She’s come here in disguise to spy on the House of Hårbørgen, sending reports back to Pandi through a magic called Commanding at which she’s “average at best.” Even when her mission is discovered by wily Lord Iansso, there’s still hope for a future in which Cinnae and Pandi form an alliance against the monstrous Gruxhoon, who (Ata suspects) are even now massing their forces for an attack on Cinnae. Suddenly, that attack happens, and Ata finds herself on the run, protecting young Cinnaen princes Jansso and Elsso (“two little boys who didn’t deserve to die for being who they were”) and trying to find her way back to Pandi, along the way discovering many things about herself and even her own native magic system. The author broadens and deepens the history and court politics in a convincing combination of narrative energy and warm human moments. For example, Ata touchingly reflects on the nights when her royal uncle would secretly visit her: “Sometimes stroking Ata’s hand or hair softly, he would leave before anyone could know he spent so much of his preciously finite time with his sister’s bastard he was not meant to love.” The worldbuilding, set on landscapes not unlike our own, and the storytelling will make readers eager to follow young Ata on her next adventure.
A gripping, well-paced first installment with a resourceful female lead.Pub Date: March 2, 2024
ISBN: 9798878185288
Page Count: 612
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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