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
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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