A consistently surprising fantasy with strong characters who enhance the story.
An alchemist and a warrior cross paths as dark forces assemble in this fantasy series opener.
Kaden Raylon is an alchemist in the kingdom of Avian. For years he’s suffered nightmares in which he dies and “an army of darkness covered the Kingdoms of Earth.” After studying in the city of Natreon, he returns home to Splendour for the Harvest Moon Festival. There, he dreads the future despite the love of his cheerful betrothed, Arika Angelika. A reptilian fortuneteller named Ceru even tells him that he has “no future” but also that he “must find a way to break” a mysterious seal to dispel darkness. Meanwhile, in the city of Drake, Tzak is the latest Dragoon, or warrior king. As night falls on a celebration in his honor, he retires to the forest with a female companion. In the morning, he finds Drake and its inhabitants burned to cinders. He encounters nobody living but Master Drogon, who explains that Tzak is cursed because his trials to become the Dragoon are incomplete. Tzak must spill the tainted blood of his last living half brother. Elsewhere, at the nesting grounds of Murder Grove, the birds of Avian prepare to answer a call to war by Arisha, “our Goddess of Love.” Allers begins this rousing epic fantasy series with magical multispecies chaos. Aside from powerful humans, Avian is home to talking birds, like Rey, the “conure parrot,” and Melody Tron, the angel-like Seraph. Early on, Arika says, “a person will always need others to give them purpose and identity,” pointing readers toward a key plot driver. Tzak is an intriguing, tragic figure, attempting to live on a pedestal and going badly astray in the process. The author’s battles are incredibly cinematic, as when “the ice dragon was flying with broken wings...spraying the trees with blood...it looked like a demon from another world.” Kaden undergoes a surprising change in the final third that gives him a new mission and proves that Allers is conceptually daring. A rewarding new dimension awaits readers in the sequel.
A consistently surprising fantasy with strong characters who enhance the story.Pub Date: May 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5255-8287-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
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
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