A compelling historical novel with a theological focus set in a rarely visited time period.
A group of Druids in 788 CE England search for a new safe haven in Linden’s historical novel.
This fourth book in the author’s series weaves together several threads established in the first three installments. The remaining Druids (a priestly class of Celts who held a deep reverence for nature) in Britain at this time faced persecution by the dominant Saxon Christian culture. A relatively large group of Druids once lived in secret at their shrine before their location was betrayed and they were forced to flee, some of them losing their lives in the process. After a long separation, the remaining Druids’ paths finally converge. Feywn, the high priestess, and Cyri, her niece and heir, are pretending to be Christians at an inn in Codswallow while they wait for others to join them. Caelym, a young Druid priest, struck out on his own on a rescue mission, but he finally reunites with the others at the inn. The group sets off for a new, semi-mythical shrine where they hope to rebuild their community. Meanwhile, Stefan, the sheriff of Codswallow, is returning to the shire with a plan to eradicate the bandits that have been plaguing the area. The sheriff discovers and captures Caelym (whom he considers to be a dangerous heathen) and survives a subsequent attempt on his life. The remainder of the book primarily deals with the Druids being forced to help Stefan foil both the bandits and his would-be assassins in order to save their own lives. The prose is lively and accessible; while characters use an archaic style of speech (“You’ve heard then! Word of my ruination has preceded me!”), the conversations still flow well. In the latter half of the narrative, a play-within-a-play plot device considerably slows down the pace and could have been significantly condensed. Interludes between the story’s sections provide both levity and engaging historical context. The characters are well-developed, and their disparate motivations provide a strong basis for the story’s development. Despite the relatively action-filled plot, the focus remains on the characters’ relationships and the spiritual clash between Druids and Saxon Christians.
A compelling historical novel with a theological focus set in a rarely visited time period.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781647429706
Page Count: 368
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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