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
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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