An intriguing premise that’s not fully realized.
In Pearson’s fantasy novel, Norse trickster god Loki is cursed and banished to oblivion, where he is rescued by spirits of another realm.
After falling in the battle of Ragnarök, a fatally injured Loki is cursed by the goddess Freyja, who seeks revenge on Loki’s bound-brother Odin. She banishes Loki from the Nine Worlds to remove Odin from power. Flung into Ginnungagap, the primordial void, Loki is rescued by another powerful figure, Anjea; Loki is sheltered in her cosmos and given a new, human female form. Awakening in a strange land called Country, with turquoise waters and hot desert sand, Loki finds that his new mortal body feels weak and fragile. Loki is healed by the goddess Yhi and put under the protection of the trickster god Wahn. Together, they hatch a plan to summon Odin to Country, opening a bridge between worlds so Loki and Odin can return to the Nine Worlds together and confront Freyja. Before that can happen, Loki must avoid angering or being killed by the many strange spirits who inhabit Country. Will the Nine Worlds be the same when he returns? The story begins with an exciting premise, skillfully weaving Norse and Australian mythologies—some familiarity with the respective traditions’ legends and characters might make for a richer read. Unfortunately, about halfway through, the story starts to fall short of its promise. Loki, the notorious trickster, doesn’t seem to have any tricks up his sleeve for escaping his predicament, and he relies on the other characters to come up with a plan. The passive protagonist makes it difficult for the story to maintain tension, though the descriptions of Country are beautiful: “Stardust gathered in a painted landscape looking like a river through the night sky.” The ending is anticlimactic, to the point where the whole narrative feels like a prologue to a larger tale. It’s never clear how, exactly, the Nine Worlds have changed in Loki’s absence, or what restoring Odin to power meant for their world.
An intriguing premise that’s not fully realized.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781963355413
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Brigids Gate Press
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2026
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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