Ultimately skippable.
A secretive club owner might just break his greatest rule: Don’t fall in love with an Immortal.
Ildaria Garcia left the Dominican Republic 200 years ago after having survived a vampire attack that left her an Immortal and in constant fear of retribution from the man who attacked her. Moving from place to place, she does her best to keep her past hidden while acting as a vigilante. However, social media has proved to be more of a bane than a boon, forcing Ildaria to lie low after her crime-fighting exploits go viral. The Night Club (yes, that's the name) is run by Joshua James Simpson Guiscard, known as G.G. Though the venue caters to a supernatural clientele, G.G. is all human. A traumatizing event has made him both fearful of and fascinated by Ildaria and her kind. While Ildaria is physically running from her past, G.G.’s avoidance is more the emotional sort. When the possibility of Ildaria and G.G. being mates is brought up, due to their immense attraction, both of them must grapple with their prior baggage. Can G.G. ever love an immortal vampire? Can Ildaria live with endangering a man she's come to care for? There’s nothing terribly new in this paranormal romance—lots of black leather outfits and the notion that fate has selected a one true love. While it’s refreshing to see a vampire heroine, the excitement quickly fades once Ildaria’s previous sexual trauma is revealed and italicized Spanish words start being sprinkled in. If readers are expecting a nuanced representation of a woman of color–turned–vampiric superhero, they won't find it here. Her characterization is hollow enough to hear an echo. Readers who have stuck with the 30-plus books of the Argeneau series will find this to be a passable addition even if the cast is getting rather large. New readers: Don’t bother, as you’ll either be lost, annoyed, or infuriated.
Ultimately skippable.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-295630-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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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