Colorful characters animate this magical tale with an environmental message.
A teenage girl, along with frog royalty, fights to restore order by reuniting the human and frog worlds in this debut fantasy and prospective-trilogy launch.
Nora Peters’ life in a tiny Pacific Northwest town has certainly not been easy. The almost-18-year-old recently lost her father in an apparent shooting accident that she thinks was murder. Now she has only her grandmother; Nora’s mom died when Nora was 10. The teen’s enameled frog pin, which once belonged to her mother, pushes her life in unexpected directions. Over in the frog world, Queen Ranya prepares for the annual Ceremony of Renewal. It’s meant to affirm cooperation between “the natural world” and the largetoe, or human, world. The ceremony, however, hasn’t been authentic in years. The ritual requires the Golden Pearl of the Forest, which someone has stolen. When word gets around that a femtoe—Nora—has the Pearl, frogs and others, including the Elementos (the elements’ spiritual essences), track her down. Some would just as soon kill Nora to recover the cherished object. But Prince “Azzie” Azzumundo has a much more peaceful solution: invite Nora to the ceremony as the largetoe representative. This throws the natural world into bedlam as nefarious types gunning for Nora, like a power-hungry frog lord, face off against the likes of Azzie’s valiant cousin Princess Linka, who, in protecting the Pearl, also protects Nora. Unfortunately, time is running out. The Pink Moon, another prerequisite for the ceremony, rises in mere days.
Brown’s epic opening installment pits Nora against many villains. Ever hostile largetoe Carl Kincade, for one, claims the girl’s father signed away the family’s property and tree farm—supposedly on the day he died. This only heightens Nora’s later troubles; she isn’t always sure who or what is coming after her. The cast comprises various frog species, like poison, zombie, and tree frogs. Although they occasionally do humanlike things (e.g., speak or brandish weapons), they’re still frogs. They’re much smaller than largetoes and hop from place to place. Irresistible hero Nora not only saves one of them, but, like her late father, she’s an environmentalist, which aligns her with the amphibians who believe her kind is hurting the planet. Nora’s friends form a diverse bunch, from Kameela Bashir, daughter of Somalian refugees, to Minh Phan, whose family hails from Vietnam. An Indigenous friend is described as belonging to a “local tribe,” but no additional information is given. Sadly, none of these teens appear often enough to develop individual personalities. Seth is the exception; he’s a complicated romantic interest, and Nora struggles to remember that he’s not like his abhorrent father, Carl. The storyline features welcome mysteries and subplots regarding, for example, the deaths of Nora’s parents and Queen Ranya’s ascendance to the throne. Brown writes well, portraying an area of clear-cutting as “a field of battle” with “arm-like limbs, slain body-like trunks, stumps, tangled roots.” She’s also a skilled artist, adorning some pages with sublime abstract collages. Readers hoping for answers won’t be disappointed, though there’s a hint of where the planned sequel is headed.
Colorful characters animate this magical tale with an environmental message.Pub Date: March 20, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985691207
Page Count: 550
Publisher: Sequoia Grove Books
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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