A multifaceted and often gripping continuation of the adventures of a vengeful warrior.
The fourth volume in a series of fantasy novels set in Roman-era Britain.
Tanner continues her Curse of Clansmen and Kings saga, following the adventures of Celtic warrior Catrin as she deals with friends, allies, and foes on the frontiers of the Roman Empire during the reign of Tiberius and his scheming mastermind Sejanus. Catrin’s secret Roman husband Marcellus’ political dealings with his rivals (and hers) offer readers a neat emotional counterbalance to Catrin’s own more exotic adventures; one of those political enemies passionately refers to her as a “murderer who hacked my guards to pieces like swine.” Her adventures largely detail Catrin’s ongoing war against her half-brother, Marrock, a sorcerer who’s usurped their father’s throne in Britannia. In order to overthrow him, Catrin must once again seek the guidance of the mystic Merlin-like figure Myrddin, a centuries-old druid—and, in addition, risk the help of far more ambivalent figures who can tap her into the mystical capacities of skulls, including her father’s, and give her the edge she needs to defeat Marrock. The result is a novel that fails in only one significant way: It’s almost entirely dependent on the three books that precede it and can’t really stand on its own for readers encountering this series for the first time. Avid readers of the series, however, will find this to be an exciting and well-wrought installment. Catrin remains a compelling, well-developed character, as does her nemesis Marrock, who’s a wonderfully satisfying and deeply unlikable villain. There are occasional lapses into slightly purple prose (“A foreboding sense of doom loomed over her as she tethered [her horse] to a beech tree”), but this new chapter generally makes for an engaging read.
A multifaceted and often gripping continuation of the adventures of a vengeful warrior.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73360-020-0
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Apollo Raven Publisher, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A character-driven fantasy story that doesn’t waste readers’ time.
Dymitr, a monster hunter turned monster, must return to face his family when he’s called home for a funeral in the second of Roth’s Curse Bearer series.
Baba Jaga, the great sorceress of Slavic folklore, has something that belongs to Dymitr: his bone sword, a magical weapon that comes from his own spine. As a Knight of the Holy Order, Dymitr was meant to use it to kill magical creatures, whom he was taught to regard as inhuman. After learning that everything he was taught about monsters was a lie, that they are in fact just as human as he is, and after Baba Jaga turned him into a magical monster himself, Dymitr has no interest in hunting them anymore. Baba Jaga made Dymitr a zmora, a magical being that feeds on human fear, and he’s only interested in figuring out what to do with his new life. But his bone sword is also made of a piece of his soul, and being separated from it will cause him to go mad. Luckily, Baba Jaga is happy to give Dymitr his sword back—so long as he kills 33 fellow Knights, starting with his own grandmother. Horrified at the thought of killing the woman who raised him, Dymitr hears more awful news from his sister. His uncle has died, and the family is gathering to perform the Knights’ burial rituals. Dymitr hopes that he can use the trip home to steal his family’s book of Knight curses and offer it to Baba Jaga as a bargaining chip for his sword. As in the first installment in the Curse Bearer series, Roth’s fantasy worldbuilding is efficient and effective. Most of the short—for fantasy, anyway—novel is dedicated to tense action sequences, expanding the fantasy world in ways that directly impact the plot, and to compelling character development as Dymitr faces his violent family.
A character-driven fantasy story that doesn’t waste readers’ time.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781250855503
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Suspenseful and terrifying; Moreno-Garcia hits it out of the park yet again.
A graduate student studying an obscure horror author is visited by a haunting of her own.
Minerva Contreras, one of the protagonists of Mexican Canadian author Moreno-Garcia’s latest, has always had a thing for the dark side. As a girl in Mexico, she “preferred to slip into the tales of Shirley Jackson rather than go out dancing with her friends,” and as a grad student in 1998 Massachusetts, she’s writing her thesis on Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure horror author and H.P. Lovecraft contemporary who only published one novel during her lifetime, The Vanishing. Beatrice was an alum of the college where Minerva studies, but Minerva still struggles to find information about her, until one of Beatrice’s acquaintances, Carolyn Yates, agrees to let Minerva examine Beatrice’s personal papers, which contain the author’s account of the disappearance of her college roommate, a quirky Spiritualist named Virginia Somerset. As Minerva tries to figure out what happened to Virginia, things start getting weird—she starts hearing strange noises, and begins to wonder whether a student who went AWOL actually met with a bad end. She also begins to notice parallels between what’s happening and the stories she heard from her great-grandmother Alba, whose family endured horrific experiences at the hands of a witch in Mexico in 1908. The point of view shifts among Minerva, Alba, and Beatrice in their various time periods, a technique which Moreno-Garcia uses effectively; it’s impressive how she keeps the narrative tension running parallel in each one. The writing is beautiful, which is par for the course for Moreno-Garcia, and in Minerva, she has created a deeply original character, steely but yearning. This is yet another triumph from one of North America’s most exciting authors.
Suspenseful and terrifying; Moreno-Garcia hits it out of the park yet again.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780593874325
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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