A clever switch on the magical-school trope.
A young boy begins a classic coming-of-age adventure when he joins a secret school for training witches to fight monsters…but this story isn’t about him.
Ever since their mother died, Vic has taken it upon herself to take care of her little brother, Henry. Their mother was a witch, a member of the Acheron Order, and she fought terrible supernatural monsters before her untimely (and mysterious) death. Henry, unlike Vic, inherited their mother’s magical abilities, and so Vic is determined to hide him from the Acheron Order, and save him from their mother’s fate. She dropped out of high school and spent years caring for Henry, even becoming a skilled fighter in case she had to defend him. When an Elder of the Order finally tracks them down, he warns that if Henry isn’t taught to use his magic, he will be in danger, and it would be safest for him to go to Avalon Castle, the Order’s headquarters, and be trained. This convinces Henry to go, and Vic begrudgingly agrees on the condition that she can come with him to make sure he’s safe. But Vic is out of place as a regular human among witches, who despise her presence in their classes because they believe that her humanness makes her beneath them. But when Vic finds proof—a mauled body—that magical monsters have been able to breach the Order’s magically warded walls, it becomes clear that the Order is being targeted by a rival organization of witches, and Vic’s days of knowing she could use her fists to keep Henry safe are over. Making Vic the protagonist is a smart twist to the trope of “chosen boy goes to magic school”; Anderson skillfully sets her up as the kind of curious, determined woman who might stick her nose where she’s been told not to, and figure out that things are not as they seem with the Acheron Order. But while most of the characters are well drawn, Anderson leans heavily enough on the tropes of the genre that the surrounding worldbuilding feels thin. Still, a sharp twist right at the end will make it worth watching for Book Two.
A clever switch on the magical-school trope.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780593976319
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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