An electric work of epic fantasy.
Three ambitious women struggle for control in a world descending into chaos in Holladay’s debut fantasy novel.
For the past five years, Alana Zaya has served unhappily as the queen of the jungle nation of Jaarin, where her sharp personality has won her the nickname “the Queen of Darkness.” She’s just received word that her mother, the queen of her homeland, Okaro, has just died. Alana is doubly pleased: she didn’t have much love for her mother, Emira (who recently tried to have Alana assassinated), and now she can return to her wind-swept island homeland and take its throne for herself. That is, if she can survive the trip across the wide Western sea. Elsewhere on the continent, Rae Toma is helping to lead a rebellion against Argos Vedros, the king of Siora, while serving as one of his royal guards. When an agent of the king manages to uncover her identity, Rae is forced to flee the country with an old friend, straight into a deadly collection of islands known as the Shatter. Witch-in-training Nur Del Sue grew up in the Shatter. Her father was a foreigner who washed up on an island—and vanished just as suddenly, with no explanation. Marked as an outsider by her people, Nur is desperate to prove herself. Fate has put these three women on a collision course, but will they help each other achieve their ambitions? Will bad things happen if they do? Holladay’s kinetic prose brings her characters to dramatic life, as here when Alana relishes a storm at sea: “Lightning splintered across the sky, and the rain fell harder, churning the ocean beneath them. Waves licked up the side of the ship like flames, spilling over the deck. She laughed. The sound came out of her with an explosion of joy. Yes. This was where she belonged.” Many of the elements of the setting and story will be familiar to fantasy fans; even so, Holladay’s worldbuilding is rich and subtle, and her protagonists are memorably bold. Readers will look forward to a sequel.
An electric work of epic fantasy.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781958607022
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Inimitable Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
A reasonably charming urban fantasy that could have used a more rigorous edit before primetime.
The latest in a series of rereleases from a prolific fantasist’s previously self-published works is a contemporary spin on the fairytale “Godfather Death.”
Viola Marek is an aswang, a shapeshifting vampire from Filipino folklore. She’s also a Chicago real estate agent trying to sell a mansion even while the ghost of its last owner, Thomas Edward Parker IV, is doing his supernatural best to block the sale. In a desperate attempt to earn her commission, she hires Fox D’Mora, Death’s mortal godson, to use his connection to get the ghost to leave. Unfortunately, Death is unavailable: He’s been kidnapped, and to get him back and prevent a worlds-spanning catastrophe, Fox, Vi, the ghost, and assorted other supernatural creatures will have to enter a high-stakes gambling game that usually only immortals can play…but rarely win. The story begins with an unusual blend of myth, fairy tale, and cosmology and inevitably descends to an almost unbearable level of sentimentality, which is simultaneously a refreshing change from Blake’s usual tableau of self-involved, selfish characters who seem driven toward tragedies of their own making. Blake could definitely do a better job at showing the love between characters rather than merely telling the reader that they’re in love. She also has an unfortunate tendency to skip potentially intriguing bits of backstory if they don’t immediately drive the plot along, which is why readers never learn anything about Fox’s childhood and what it was actually like having Death as a parent. Nor does she explain why only two of the four archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, play outsize roles in determining the order of the cosmos, while Uriel and Michael are nowhere to be seen. Bits of anachronism—like the use of a rubber band as aversion therapy 200 years ago or the presence of a magical wristwatch from a time long before watches were common—might be intended to be Pratchett-style humor or chalked up to magic? It’s hard to tell what’s intentional and what is simply careless. Now that Blake has a traditional publisher, perhaps the editors of her future novels will guide the author to address these issues when they arise.
A reasonably charming urban fantasy that could have used a more rigorous edit before primetime.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781250892461
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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