Readers craving another dose of superlative magic battles and ambitious plotting won’t be disappointed.
In this fifth volume of an epic fantasy series, a hero uses time travel to thwart demonic hordes in the present.
In the magical realm of Kismeria, Adem Highlander, Wil Martyr, and Carl Wilder are the prophesied Sons of Odin, destined to battle the Shadow. Though Adem is devoted to and has a daughter with Jean Fairsythe, the Daughter of Thor, he also has a child with Princess Isabelle. Their adult son, Pendral, is in thrall to the evil Jinn-Lord, imprisoned in Kerak’Otozi, a volcanic mountain. To ensure that his son becomes an upstanding, compassionate man, Adem has been using Elarja RinHannen’s Time Stones to visit Pendral in the past, as a boy. Though Pendral’s demon army seems to be growing in the present, he appears conflicted while fighting the Sons of Odin and their allies. Meanwhile, Druid Allor MorKondeith creates a potion that alleviates the curse of creeping madness in those who use teran and terael magic. But Carl doesn’t appreciate the intoxicating side effects. Adem also begins to question his chances of gaining redemption and God’s forgiveness after all the violence of his warrior life. Could the Sons have a kind of PTSD from the event that brought them from Earth to Kismeria? Later, Elarja warns that too many visits to young Pendral have “the potential for great tragedy.” Hammer goes back to the deep imaginative well that has served him in the four prior volumes of this fantasy series. This volume explores father-son relationships and the missed opportunities therein. In the present, warrior Rayne Dragon-Sword battles Pendral, his own father, only to see his friends—Shaye, Ellagon, and Ragan—possessed by demons. And yet the author’s penchant for verbal and visual extravagance makes the characters’ personal dramas difficult to maintain (“Time was sliding into a puddle like gel. Space was constricted and at the same time stretched beyond containable proportions”). Magical action against countless creatures maximizes the gore. Euphoria-inducing potions and an herb called menuhybe, which is smoked, have obvious real-world parallels. A sweetly surprising finale expands the potential of subsequent volumes.
Readers craving another dose of superlative magic battles and ambitious plotting won’t be disappointed.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 311
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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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