An engagingly intimate chapter in this intricate, sprawling fantasy series.
In this fantasy novel by K.I.S., two brothers pursue their destinies.
The author’s Chronicles of Aitarbith series continues in this second installment, likewiseset on the eponymous fantasy continent with its many kingdoms and varied climates. This volume shifts focus from the healer Ata, the main character in the preceding entry, to center around a young apprentice magician named Briin and his older brother Hiirn, who are as close as twins even though Hiirn is the elder by three years; he often helps his sensitive brother overcome panic attacks (when they were little children, he’d “stuffed his tiny fist into Briin’s shrieking mouth and been savagely bitten bloody—all to no avail, for Briin had continued to shriek like a stuck pig and awoken the entire household”). As the novel opens, Briin is having increasingly vivid dreams in which he’s fighting his way through a dark wood, pursued by monstrous creatures called the Gruxhoon. The narrative splits between the adventures and perils of each brother, with Hiirn meeting his future wife Meira of the exotic Irie race (“he had known their marriage was inevitable and right, and so had set out to make it so”) and Briin studying to become a magician despite his unconventional approach to understanding his world’s magic. The author’s prose style is often turgid with fantasy-lit archaic language (“you ruffian” and the like) and filled with cliches, like “beg, borrow, or steal” or “discretion is the better part of valor.” But, like its predecessor, the novel is written with heartfelt energy that carries the narrative along. Briin is particularly well realized—his brother must warn him that the old master magicians “don’t respond well to being shown their own inadequacies by a mere novice.” The relationship between the brothers, often played out over correspondence, is touchingly rendered as the author further fleshes out this intriguing fantasy world.
An engagingly intimate chapter in this intricate, sprawling fantasy series.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780796173621
Page Count: 184
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2025
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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