An imaginative nautical fantasy hampered by uneven execution.
An aimless young man is swept up in a fantasy adventure in Sheriff’s debut novel.
Poor, widowed Mrs. Anderson calls a man named Stanley about her worries over her son, Jason. She fears that he’s “gotten himself involved in some shady business” involving a get-rich-quick scheme engineered by a mysterious woman named Talina. Stanley tries to reassure her, guessing that Jason, his longtime friend, is simply distracted by his engineering projects and will be back in general circulation soon enough. Stanley, it turns out, has his own problems, including the sudden reappearance of his hated father: “He had never forgotten the broken home that had been his childhood,” Stanley recalls, “the bruises that had devoured his soul before his body.” However, Jason and Mrs. Anderson are like family to him, so he agrees to find out what Jason is up to; he thinks about how his friend has always been intensely focused while Stanley has always felt adrift. Much to his surprise, Stanley witnesses Jason being kidnapped, and he soon finds himself abducted by the same people, who are members of a mysterious cabal. Before long, they toss Stanley overboard off their strange, luminous craft. He assumes he’s going to die, but as he’s miraculously rescued by a woman named Lythea, he finds that he has the ability to breathe underwater. He soon embarks with the stranger on an adventure to rescue Jason from the Sirens who’ve spirited him away, and she introduces him to a fantastic world beneath the waves. Dark revelations follow about Jason’s fate and Stanley’s father.
Over the course of this novel, Sheriff relates the story of Stanley’s adventures, which include many supernatural elements, and Jason’s fate with a good deal of narrative energy. She also carefully and effectively reveals the various aspects of her fictional world, piece by piece, to keep readers intrigued. However, the work frequently has a tendency toward clichés (such as “all hell broke loose” and “green-eyed monster”) and offers a good deal of purple prose along the way. “He reached out in despair to check for the metal band that coiled itself around his ring finger,” she writes at one point early on, for example, referring to a ring; at another point, she sets a scene with a sentence that awkwardly begins, “The sunset extended its last exhales of rays over a row of sailing yachts….” The overall flatness of Stanley’s characterization will likely provide another impediment to readers’ enjoyment of the story; as the narrator, he’s a major focus of the book, but he’s among the least interesting characters in it despite the many intriguing things that happen to him. All that said, Sheriff’s imagining of the fantasy kingdom that Stanley encounters, and the enemies and allies whom he picks up along the way, is passionately enthusiastic, and the story’s fast pace will hold many readers’ attention. The tone of the book’s final segment is likely to surprise many readers as well.
An imaginative nautical fantasy hampered by uneven execution.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.
In a distant future, after the Last War when the human population became endangered, a new society formed from the ashes, strictly to optimize procreation.
But not procreation between just anyone. This society, ruled by the Illum—a mysterious authoritarian group—assigns mates to select for the best traits and to breed out defects, to grow the Elite population living in the clouds. Protagonist Emeline is a stubborn and bored young woman, working her days away on the ground as a Minor Defect—one of the class of women waiting to be approved for mating with an Elite, and hoping to never be banished further from society. Emeline’s instincts are apparently to reject the rigid decorum of her society, but she spends years trying to follow the rules set out for her, or at least dissociates enough not to challenge her way of life, until one day an elusive and charming man, Hal, walks into her office to talk about art. The same day, she is approved for mating and matched with Collin, the youngest member of the Illum, in the sort of pairing that hasn’t happened in decades. Courtship with Collin is full of luxury—fancy dinners and balls in the clouds—but also lies and days of discovering secrets kept from her, while trying to keep the Elite’s rumors and malicious Press at bay. Caught between these two men, with their own agendas, and so many unanswered questions, Emeline must decide what she wants, if she can want anything at all. With a rebellion rising in secret and the repression of the Illum close at hand, she’ll find what she’s willing to lose for the ability to choose for herself. The dystopian worldbuilding is underdeveloped at best, so get swept up in discovering truth from lies quickly before it starts to fall apart in your hands.
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798217090990
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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