A cleverly rendered fantasy of unexpected reinventions.
A financially ruined author discovers she’s actually a witch in Marion’s fantasy novel.
When author Olivia Furie’s husband dies, she learns that the man had spent years covertly spending their collective wealth—including her book royalties—on a secret second family, leaving her mired in debt. Without a house to live in and barely a cent in her bank account, the 60-year-old writer of the popular Chic Woman series takes her cat Magnus and heads to Cornwall, where she’s just inherited a cottage from a relativeshe doesn’t remember in the village of Rowanswood. Unbeknownst to Olivia, Rowanswood is a special place, one that can only be found by those who have business there. It’s the one village in Britain where humans live side by side with the Fae—fauns, mermaids, dryads, and the like. The spells around Rowanswood are ministered by the Crones, a group of advanced human witches with powers over various elements. Olivia’s invitation to Rowanswood is no accident—it has something to do with the strange happenings since her husband died, like the witchy streak that has appeared in her hair and her lawyer’s office curtains bursting into flames the moment she learned she was broke. The invitation may also involve Gaelin, the handsome man who keeps appearing in her life and who represents a very different sort of Fae from the ones in Rowanswood: a secret race interested in bending humanity to its will. Rowanswood is a wonderland for a certain type of cozy, pagan-curious reader; a place where a diverse coven of women gather to drink tea and pore over magical texts with their petlike familiars. (Some of Marion’s richest language is reserved for the scones in the village cafe: “It melted in her mouth before the tartness of the lemon hit her taste buds, followed by the sweetness of the flaky pastry. The lavender brought a subtle, herbal undertone to the mix.”) While the pacing is a bit slow at times, the author finds a happy medium between contemporary comedy and gossamer fantasy that will please many readers.
A cleverly rendered fantasy of unexpected reinventions.Pub Date: March 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781775034605
Page Count: 323
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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