A richly imagined beginning that shouldn’t be missed.
A young woman is dragged from her quiet country life into the vicious, backstabbing world of politics and religion in this fantasy series opener.
Hellevir has always been different. When she was 10, she discovered the ability to travel into Death, the strange, liminal world ruled by a mysterious man in black. When she is 12, and her mother dies in childbirth, Hellevir travels to Death and offers the man in black a trade: If Hellevir gives up “something from life that is full of life” and a “blood gift” (in this case, one of her fingers), she will be able to return her mother to the world of the living. Milandre, an old healer and Hellevir’s mentor, warns Hellevir to keep her gifts a secret. But when the queen brings her poisoned granddaughter’s corpse to Milandre’s doorstep, Hellevir can’t stop herself from bringing the young woman, Sullivain, back to life. Soon afterward, Hellevir receives a royal summons to move to the city and be ready to bring Sullivain back from the dead at a moment’s notice. Only the man in black isn’t happy with Hellevir defying the laws of nature, and he requests a new kind of price if she wants to bring back any more lost souls without losing even more of herself. Gordon’s fantastic series opener paints the world of Rochidain with vivid detail, from its network of canals to the drunken parties of its nobles to the sinister state religion that has a strong hold on Hellevir’s mother. Hellevir’s complicated relationship with Sullivain, whose gratitude and attachment to Hellevir don’t stop her from threatening Hellevir’s family should she let Sullivain die, has more than enough substance to sustain the books to come.
A richly imagined beginning that shouldn’t be missed.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780063248779
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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