A religious historical fantasy that focuses on an ultimate battle between good and evil.
A debut historical fantasy that pits God against the devil, and their magic-users against one another.
In the year 1241, paladins—special warriors with magical abilities in service of the Christian church—are sent out into the world to enact God’s will and uphold his laws. Lord Vhaldrynn Malleus, one of the 12 strongest and high-ranking “primus” paladins, is using his healing powers on a battlefield when he’s informed that his own city has been mysteriously attacked by nearby armies. Vhaldrynn rushes back to his home, only to find a smoking ruin where his house once stood, and the burned corpses of his family. In his grief, he denounces God and his role as a paladin, and vows to get revenge. After promising to destroy the world in his rage, Vhaldrynn meets a mysterious stranger in the forest, whose evil identity quickly becomes apparent. While listening to the whispers of Lucifer, Vhaldrynn learns that his paladin powers didn’t abandon him when he denounced his faith, but are actually stronger than ever—and include the ability to raise an army of the dead. Now he can destroy anyone and anything that dares defy him. It ultimately falls to paladin Lady Camila Chastaine and her two companions to bring peace back to the world. Over the course of this violent fantasy tale, Valdez effectively keeps the action moving along. It’s steeped in religious lore throughout, and there is a complex hierarchy of paladins and church officials—which, as a result, means that there are a fair number of character names for readers to learn. Even so, the novel is a relatively short length for the genre—fewer than 200 pages. Still, despite its brevity, the author does a fair job of organically bringing each player onto the stage, rather than bogging the reader down with unnecessary exposition and wordy introductions.
A religious historical fantasy that focuses on an ultimate battle between good and evil.Pub Date: March 8, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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