A dazzling, delightfully entertaining fusion of a horror tale and a Western.
Gunslinging monster hunters vow to take out a nasty batch of gremlins in Grifant’s fantasy sequel.
It’s been a year since Melinda West and Lance Putnam retired from hunting and exterminating monsters. They’re content with a quieter ranch life in their small town of Five Peaks.So, it’s with reluctance that they agree to help another town, Fallows, where humans have been dying from an inexplicable illness that causes their veins to glow, post-mortem. Melinda and Lance quickly find the culprits: gremlins. They start their hunt by going after a single “grem” that they spotted in Fallows, which ultimately leads them to crowds of the creatures. The gunslingers, armed with pistols, dynamite, and a crossbow, garner new allies, including the recently widowed and noticeably pregnant Brigitta; alchemist witch Nox, and several others. The grems are able to multiply at an alarming rate, so it seems that the only way to take them down for good is to somehow ensure that they stop laying eggs. Grifant’s taut follow-up to Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger (2023) wisely devotes more time to establishing its unforgettable setting. It’s not a monster story set in the Old West, but rather a Western that happens to contain monsters, as evidenced by Melinda and Lance’s attire (each wears a wide-brimmed hat and a duster), weapons (six-shooters with holsters), and means of transportation (ever-dependable horses Pepper and Mud). The heroes face a variety of engaging challenges, including vicious creatures that hail from the Edge (including “fire cattle” with “too-wide mouths like sharks”), a fissure between the human world and the monster world; untrustworthy outlaws and refugees at an outpost; and frequently rough terrain. Numerous characters receive the spotlight at various times, including those who appear in only a few chapters. Lance is little more than Melinda’s sidekick, but the duo’s mutual loyalty and respect is unmistakable and a driving narrative force.
A dazzling, delightfully entertaining fusion of a horror tale and a Western.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781963355277
Page Count: 237
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2025
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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