A bloody, intriguing bildungsroman with a fascinating plunge into the mythology of Mexico’s original inhabitants.
A gender-flipped Zorro figure with magical powers struggles to find her path in an alternate Mexico a few decades after Cortés’ conquest.
Lady Leonora is the illegitimate daughter of the late viceroy of New Spain and a Nahua woman of the Mexica people. As a child, she stumbled into the realm of the gods known as Tamoanchan, where she was known by the Nahua name Tecuani and trained in martial arts and sorcery, including the ability to shapeshift into a panther. Evicted from paradise after 10 years, she dons a black mask, calls herself Pantera, and uses her powers to help the Nahua fight Spanish rule. Now, Lady Leonora is betrothed to Prince Felipe of Spain, unexpectedly shipwrecked on their shores, and trading barbs with the annoyingly attractive Andrés de Ayeta, a Nahua man attached to the Spanish military. Like Leonora/Tecuani/Pantera, neither Felipe nor Andrés is entirely whom he appears to be, and a variety of dark secrets will be revealed once the loose confederation of Nahua rebels known as La Justicia move toward open warfare with the Spanish. In these challenging times, Leonora needs to figure out who she is and what she owes to herself and to others on various sides of the conflict. The book soon darts away from merely being a reimagining of the Zorro story, which is both a strength (because it allows the plot to travel into much more original territory) and a weakness (in that we never actually learn about the feats that gained Pantera her reputation). Pantera is mostly there as an established part of Leonora’s identity crisis and a source of conflict; she mainly has the best of intentions, but her need to keep secrets and defend herself in a hostile world, as well as some entirely understandable mistakes she makes, have devastating consequences that she’s forced to reckon with. Despite her fantastical circumstances, the resulting character is not a stereotypical high fantasy hero but a real person whom readers can believe in.
A bloody, intriguing bildungsroman with a fascinating plunge into the mythology of Mexico’s original inhabitants.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780063254312
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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