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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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