Romance and resplendent characters fuel this novel’s enthralling magical world.
A witch and her lover aim to thwart a villainous immortal hellbent on domination in Gateley’s contemporary fantasy sequel.
Fate has united Canadian Julia Harrison and Irishman Dom O’Brien throughout their various lifetimes. Together once again in 2018, they survive their destined run-in with depraved sorcerer Cassius, largely thanks to Julia’s fairly new Bearing magic, akin to witchcraft. Julia and Dom leave Canada’s west coast for LA, where they hope to lie low for a spell. But it’s not easy to elude Cassius’ Wraiths, which have been ominously gathering all around them. Fortunately, the couple isn’t short on allies—from magic-wielding Druids to weapons-oriented Knaves. Julia is still trying to “unlock” her own power but hasn’t yet mastered it. Though Bearers like her are rare, she senses a dark wielder of Bearing magic who’s possibly in league with Cassius. Meanwhile, Julia and the others are oblivious to what Cassius is up to—scouring the globe for an ancient tome he believes will put an end to all “Wielders.” With any luck, Julia’s visions will warn her about Cassius’ fiendish plans. This second installment of a trilogy (following Tides of the Sovereign, 2022) sharpens its focus even more on Julia and Dom’s riveting series-driving union. It’s steeped in searing romance and tragedy; for centuries Cassius has killed them off each time they connect, and Dom, unlike Julia, remembers their past lives and all the times he’s watched her die. Moreover, the couple treks the world together, as when one of Julia’s “Divinations” sends them to Mexico. Through uber-evil Cassius’ point of view, the reader is privy to the novel’s vividly rendered global settings, whether he’s wandering through market stalls in Marrakech or driving past a medieval fortress in Carcassonne, France, for example. The author elevates this fantasy with some intense magic-driven action in between the sympathetic couple’s many intimate and convincingly passionate scenes.
Romance and resplendent characters fuel this novel’s enthralling magical world.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781039155268
Page Count: 531
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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