A puckish, free-wheeling take on the sword-and-sorcery genre.
This second book in Pettway’s Misplaced Mercenaries series sees a diamond-in-the-rough imposter king defend his city from political intrigue and military incursion.
Carrying on from the events of A Good Running Away (2019), ex-mercenary Keane has been accepted as king of Greenshade. He has married the princess—now Queen Megan—and rules as best he can over a Great Council of devious, squabbling noblemen. Keane’s sister in arms, the fearsome ex-mercenary Sarah, acts as his bodyguard while also receiving magical instruction from Finnagel, the city’s resident sorcerer. Keane and Sarah have landed on their feet, but they are not yet out of the woods. When Keane arrived at Treaty Hill, he was impersonating Prince Despin Swifthart of Tyrrane. That nation has now discovered the deception. With armed reprisal imminent, Keane sends Sarah and Finnagel on a diplomatic mission to shore up Greenshade’s treaties with the neighboring kingdoms. In their absence, Keane is left vulnerable. Megan is pregnant. More so than ever before, Keane feels a genuine allegiance to his adopted kingdom. But the enemy is at the gate, and Greenshade’s allies have turned in favor of Tyrrane. Worse, there are forces within the capital of Treaty Hill working to betray the city. Can Keane outmaneuver the backstabbers and keep his wife, unborn child, and kingdom safe? While the book is something of a bridging installment in the series (Sarah’s mission in particular does not further the plot in any great way), the developing storylines afford plenty of opportunities for character development and exploration of a diverse world. Separating Keane and Sarah allows each to shine. Megan emerges as a second strong female character while Sarah’s new companions, Cassius and the troll Grohann, are well realized. Pettway’s prose has a lightness of touch often missing in epic fantasy. The dialogue is frequently vulgar but inventively so, disavowing realism with an eye instead to humor. The chapters are short, often ending in quips, and the novel as a whole moves quickly and confidently. Overall there is much here to like.
A puckish, free-wheeling take on the sword-and-sorcery genre.Pub Date: June 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951445-10-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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
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