A complicated and gloomy but engaging fantasy.
In Kiser’s dark fantasy novel, an orphan with an odd ability finally finds answers he’s been seeking throughout his young life—but soon wishes he hadn’t.
Young adult Deagon Cortez summarizes his power simply: “I see things in the rain. Strange things”—including “invisible figures that come looking for me.” Fortunately, Deagon lives in Las Vegas, where rain is rare. Everything changes one stormy night as Deagon looks for the strange people in the downpour while accompanied by his best friend, Kammy,and ex-cop Billy McHiles, who found him with his dead mother 22 years before and has watched out for him ever since. One of the supernatural creatures attacks Deagon and Kammy, who fall into a lake. They emerge in Lychwood, a town with Victorian-era trappings shrouded in perpetual dusk. It’s been trapped in such a state due to the magic-wielding Sebian, also known as the Foul One, and his army of Bedlamites. Deagon learns that he, himself, is a being also known as “a Deagon” who can cross through the Void from his own world to numerous other lands. He also discovers that he has a role in a battle against Sebian that began decades before. Deagon must hone his powers while attempting to protect those important to him and stop the Foul One before he conquers Earth. Kiser, the author of Fifthwind (2012), presents a multilayered, complex tale that leaves Deagon—and the reader—constantly playing catch-up. This unpredictability is a positive trait, however, as it’s enjoyable to watch the protagonist struggle to put together all the clues. Kiser’s atmospheric descriptions bring the darkness of Lychwood under Sebian to terrifying life; his characterization is also strong, starting with Deagon, who’s become used to being in the shadows but flourishes when he’s at the center of the action. Billy, his surrogate father, also stands out in support of Deagon, despite his skepticism about Lychwood’s occult trappings. It’s easy to root for the protagonist and his allies as they wage an uphill battle against pure evil.
A complicated and gloomy but engaging fantasy.Pub Date: April 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-703652-4
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Corvus Street
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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