A sensual and savage but nuanced epic fantasy tale.
An archer joins a group of thieves as the world teeters on the brink of war in debut author Barron’s epic-fantasy series opener.
Jethis a Del’Cabrian soldier with impeccable archery skills and heightened senses. He’s with a squad of men in the desert who are intent on stopping a marriage between the Herrani and Tezkhan tribes. If the Herrani mage and overlord Nas’Gavarr, aka “the Immortal Serpent,” marries his daughter, Saf’Raisha, to Chief Ukhuna, he’ll have enough resources to take over the world. The Del’Cabrian soldiers easily capture their prey, and while Jeth takes a turn guarding Saf’Raisha, she reveals to him that she’s really Anwarr, a thief posing as the mage’s daughter to steal the Emerald of Dulsakh from Chief Ukhuna. When Jeth accidentally kills an abusive fellow soldier, his only choice is to help Anwarr escape. After they successfully obtain the Emerald, she brings him to the City of Herran to join her commune alongside thieves Lysandros, Ash, and Istari. They take orders from someone named Snake Eye, and their next assignment, stealing the Bloodstone Dagger from Nas’Gavarr, should yield their biggest score yet. Meanwhile, Vidya, a vengeful Harpy, won’t rest until the Immortal Serpent is dead. Barron launches a racy, culturally detailed saga that examines what it is to be an outsider: Anwarr, who sleeps with multiple partners, tells Jeth at one point that “The past only serves to keep you from truly being free,” and although he misses his home of Fae’ren, Jeth chooses a life full of danger and erotic adventurousness. Barron maintains tight control over the violence, ratcheting up the gore slowly until, later in the novel, one character’s skin is “ripped away with such force, his hair, clothing, and every accessory went with it.” A steady series of twists, including the debut of a shape-shifting “Flesh Mage,” will keep readers intrigued as the tale goes on. Lurid plot elements, such as the fact that Harpies require three male sacrifices for a powerful ritual, should transfix both horror and fantasy fans. Barron hints at a tempestuous sequel.
A sensual and savage but nuanced epic fantasy tale.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-989071-00-7
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Foul Fantasy Fiction
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.
Ware (In A Dark, Dark Wood, 2015) offers up a classic “paranoid woman” story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery.
Days before departing on a luxury cruise for work, travel journalist Lo Blacklock is the victim of a break-in. Though unharmed, she ends up locked in her own room for several hours before escaping; as a result, she is unable to sleep. By the time she comes onboard the Aurora, Lo is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and possibly even PTSD, so when she hears a big splash from the cabin next door in the middle of the night, “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water,” she can’t prove to security that anything violent has actually occurred. To make matters stranger, there's no record of any passenger traveling in the cabin next to Lo’s, even though Lo herself saw a woman there and even borrowed makeup from her before the first night’s dinner party. Reeling from her own trauma, and faced with proof that she may have been hallucinating, Lo continues to investigate, aided by her ex-boyfriend Ben (who's also writing about the cruise), fighting desperately to find any shred of evidence that she may be right. The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: a woman insists murder has occurred, everyone else says she’s crazy. But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts. Despite this successful formula, and a whole lot of slowly unraveling tension, the end is somehow unsatisfying. And the newspaper and social media inserts add little depth.
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3293-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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