Though the tale is dense with dialogue, the unique protagonist makes for an engaging companion on the journey.
Trzebunia’s coming-of-age fantasy novel follows a gifted young woman as a prophecy sets political machinations in motion.
Peregrine is 12 winters old. Her father, Sir Walter, is one of the King’s Knights in the realm of Moran. It may not be a typical routine for a young lady, but Peregrine spends her mornings training with a weapons master named Roth. She is also skilled in the use of healing herbs, and she can tell when someone is lying. Perhaps most impressive of all, though, is her ability to communicate with animals. Despite such talents, Peregrine doesn’t get along with her disapproving stepmother. Not that Peregrine goes around advertising her abilities—she mostly talks to her father about such things. It is he who points out that, while she is indeed a rare person, “It is the rarest gem that carries the most value.” When Peregrine’s father vanishes, she is, of course, concerned; to complicate matters, after he disappears, a girl from the neighboring kingdom of Din Sul shows up in the Moran woods. The girl, Tianan, is confused about how she wound up in this location—particularly since Moran’s relations with Din Sul have been strained for years. Meanwhile, in Din Sul, the emperor is told of a prophecy that indicates the emergence of two important powers. While one of these powers would appear to be someone like a king, the other is more mysterious: the Gatherer of Creation. Regardless of who this Gatherer turns out to be, the emperor has plans to harness both powers so that he can one day take over the land of Moran.
The novel doles out quite a bit of information early in the text: Readers learn of Peregrine’s routines, her abilities with various animals, the difficulties with her stepmother, and the fun she has with her sister. As pleasant a character as Peregrine is, there’s not a whole lot of action to compel readers’ attention until her father disappears, nearly 100 pages into the story. Much of the heavy page count is given over to dialogue; when the characters talk, they tend to talk a lot (a typically verbose passage reads, “I am not ashamed to tell you that I am a nobody, from nowhere, hidden my whole life in the middle of a forest down at the tip of the kingdom”). Peregrine is, nevertheless, an endearing protagonist, and not necessarily a character whom readers might expect to lead a fantasy novel. Sure, she’s trained in combat, but healing and communicating are more her bailiwick; after all, she can help a tree’s health by touching it. As she gets older and her abilities increase, she’s able to lead readers further into the unknown. And the book has a great deal of the unknown, beyond Moran and even Din Sul. Later on, Peregrine laments, “Had I had even one day of inner peace since my father had disappeared all those years ago?” This lack of peace helps the story maintain continuous forward motion.
Though the tale is dense with dialogue, the unique protagonist makes for an engaging companion on the journey.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Jack Frost Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
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
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
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