A mythical, disturbing tale with impressive worldbuilding and a memorable cast.
A queen and her people fight back against oppressive, beastly warriors that have seized their city in this debut fantasy.
Queen Nahar rules the desert city of Samandal alone, having lost her parents by the time she was 18 years old. This prosperous city resides on crucial trade routes that unite various regions. So Samandal’s Great Council is understandably worried when massive, “semi-human” raiders, the Mrrrg, overtake a neighboring town—a “major nexus” for the trade routes. Despite its efforts, the Samandal army can’t stop the Mrrrg’s mighty Dragon Horde from seizing the city. Paramount chieftain and warlord Timur sets his sights on Nahar even before his Dragon Horde reaches Samandal. As is typical for a savage Mrrrg, Timur forces himself on Nahar only to feel something beyond physical pleasure. Nahar, too, senses a deep connection while shamefully enjoying sex, even when other men rape and, at one point, whip her. Meanwhile, the captive citizens plot an escape, and Bahadur, the leader of the city’s temporarily useless Household Guard, spearheads a rebellion to retake Samandal. He starts by disrupting the profitable trade routes, which Timur has been exploiting. But the paramount chieftain also faces dissension within the Dragon Horde; his love for Nahar is a sign of weakness that some Mrrrg will take advantage of. As battles against the Mrrrg and humans increase, Nahar discovers an unusual way to acquire power. She must nevertheless choose a side—take back her throne or love an enemy of both Samandal and the human race.
Templeton’s epic story teems with melodrama, sporadic action, and eroticism. Many readers will be put off or deeply troubled by the explicit sex scenes, as they involve a woman aroused by rape. Although Timur and Nahar aren’t the only characters who are featured, the sex scenes can be repetitive. But the author does skillfully portray this tale’s intriguing world, from the lands surrounding Samandal to the myriad characters. For example, Samandal’s women, who oversee the city’s politics and finances, plan the escape from Mrrrg control using “bribes and seduction.” In the story, good and evil aren’t easily defined; not everyone is innocent in Samandal, which has a dark underbelly where killers and thieves thrive. While Templeton rarely misses an opportunity to describe Nahar’s somatic beauty, the author proves adept at portraying various characters, including Kashi, a wizard: “Mustachios curled under his hawk nose, and his beard, black but streaked with white, reached nearly to his waist.” The narrative’s action comes in bursts, which are often effective and a further display of the sharp prose: “The steeds of both warriors, well trained and tried in war, fought as well, each sensing from the shifting of his rider’s weight where and when he meant to strike, and swerving to place him at best advantage without need for direction.” The final act takes an odd but not entirely unexpected turn, and the story ends on a surprisingly lyrical note.
A mythical, disturbing tale with impressive worldbuilding and a memorable cast.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 433
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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