A quirky, steamy fantasy that’s just what the romance genre needs.
A trader is swept up into an epic adventure after she inadvertently saves a demon’s life.
Cinnamon Hotpepper has only ever known a quiet, unassuming life on her family’s spice farm, and she doesn’t expect that to change. When it comes time for their village’s deity—the goddess Myva—to choose her new patrons, Cinnamon’s plan is to keep her head down and avoid getting involved with anything too far outside her comfort zone. Staggering home after one too many mugs of wine that same night, though, she inadvertently crosses paths with a demon, someone who should terrify her, and narrowly escapes with her life. The next morning, who should knock on the farm’s front door but the demon himself? Something about Cinnamon has given Fallon Ozul the ability to break out of the spell that has kept him in a monstrous frame of mind. Now he wants her help in seeking out the witch responsible for keeping his kind enslaved and telling everyone they’re evil, putting an end to her once and for all. And who is that witch? None other than Myva, who isn’t actually a goddess. Cinnamon knows she’s not cut out for an adventure like this, but she can’t deny her growing attraction to Fallon, so maybe she won’t try that hard to resist his efforts to persuade her to join him. In the process of destroying Myva’s hold on the demons, they might succeed at changing their world for the better. While the contemporary-feeling dialogue and characterization might clash with the setting and worldbuilding for some readers, and the book’s evolving romance could have benefited from more room to spread out, the story is a charming addition to the fantasy-romance realm.
A quirky, steamy fantasy that’s just what the romance genre needs.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780316570275
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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