Imaginatively quirky, with stomach-churning brutality, sharp wit, and a powerful hero.
In Shipton’s fantasy novel, four escapees from a dystopian city team up to stay ahead of the cadre of bounty hunters sent to capture them.
Gladiator Eleanor “Ellie” Skinner triumphs in one more battle to the death in the arena. The reigning powers (called the Thral) of Draconia demand she fight in one grizzly battle a year; her other option is becoming a mother, and Ellie has no interest in raising a child. In Draconia, the men rule—they possess undefined magic powers that are stripped away from baby girls as soon as they’re born. Now, at 35, with a wooden arm to replace the one she lost in battle sometime during her 17 years in the arena, Ellie is the oldest undefeated gladiator in Draconia. Her best friend, Rosalind “Roz” Butcher, is, unwillingly, the second-oldest gladiator (unable to have a baby, Roz was forced into the arena). Ellie is horrified to realize she herself has become pregnant after one night’s indiscretion. Roz has heard rumors of an old woman who lives by the ocean beyond Draconia who still has her magic; perhaps she can help Ellie get rid of the baby. But first, she and Roz must escape from the city. They trek through the grimy sewers of Draconia, where the women pick up a teenager named Sam who has his own reasons for wanting to escape. The narrative combines raw, graphic violence with edgy humor and unexpected poignancy. Composed in contemporary lingo loaded with expletives, the story also throws around occasional antiquated terminology just for fun—Ellie refers to the fetus she’s carrying as the “homunculus.” It won’t take readers long to begin to connect the not-so-subtle similarities between Draconia’s undergirding philosophy with the political and social rhetoric of today. This is not a novel for the squeamish, but readers comfortable with the blood, gore, and rough language have plenty of satisfying adventure in store for them.
Imaginatively quirky, with stomach-churning brutality, sharp wit, and a powerful hero.Pub Date: July 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798295553233
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Tyrannosaurus Yes Media
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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