A well-realized and lively caper.
Pettway’s debut fantasy novel sees an odd couple of mercenaries flee their bloodthirsty fellows and take refuge by posing as royalty.
Keane and Sarah are members of Wallace’s Company, a band of mercenaries who engage in peripatetic looting, pillaging, and extortion throughout the Thirteen Kingdoms. Keane is a wisecracking rogue, and Sarah is the most formidable swordfighter among her 400-odd colleagues. The two have been inseparable since childhood. When Keane earns the ire of Harden Grayspring, the mercenaries’ lord marshal, he and Sarah take to their heels, pausing only to purloin the company’s wage box. Harden, a ruthless and unforgiving man, pursues them and brings the rest of the company along. While running for their lives, Keane and Sarah stumble upon an opportunity to do something foolhardy but, to Keane, irresistible—to take the place of the recently deceased Prince Despin Swifthart of Tyrrane, who had been traveling to the city of Treaty Hill and Forest Castle to meet and marry Princess Rance when he died. Unfortunately for Keane and Sarah, the deception leads them to be trapped in the royal household and held there by an unseen power. Also, King Rance despises Keane, as does the princess. Can he and Sarah survive to make their escape before their true identities are exposed—and before Harden brings the might of Wallace’s Company down upon the city? Pettway tells the tale in the third person from multiple viewpoints, devoting time not only to Keane and Sarah, but also to Harden and his right-hand man, Eli Whister. The antagonists are uncommonly complex characters, as a result, adding further realism to the convincing setting. The author sketches and hints at elaborate multiracial and multicultural societies without subjecting the reader to boundless exposition. The story moves at a good pace, helped along by characters’ banter, which can be a tad too glib at times but employs inventive (and vulgar) curses and insults. Readers’ enjoyment of this book will depend heavily on their appreciation of Keane as a lovable scoundrel, but it will likely appeal to connoisseurs of lighthearted fantasy.
A well-realized and lively caper.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951445-02-7
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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