A darkly comic, compelling, and critical tale about family and the never-ending grind.
In this debut satire, a newly promoted demon struggles to possess an innocent girl on Earth and fulfill a prophecy.
Karen Floyd’s job is in Hell. She works at the Nakara Corporation, which provides internet, cable, and cellphones for Hell’s lost souls. But she gets a welcome promotion when her “sick box” pops up in the earthly realm. This box filled with spiritual items was the last thing Karen saw before dying. Now, thanks to a garage sale, the box resides with the Matthews family and offers a direct route from Hell to Earth. Karen’s new project is possessing the body of 5-year-old Mallory, which, as it happens, is the start of a prophecy foretold years before the protagonist reached Hell. She fights to control her unpredictable travels between realms; her slowly materializing form on Earth; and Mallory herself. But when someone capable of exorcisms enters the Matthews family’s circle, the little girl’s bizarre behavior (for example, blaming things on her invisible friend, Karen) may ultimately send the demon back to Hell as a failure. Fries’ entertainingly flippant tone makes Hell comparable to Earth. But differences are hard to miss, as Hell’s average denizen has horns and a “long red swishing tail” and faces perpetual dangers, like random zombie hordes. This engaging story fuses gory moments with plentiful humor, from lowbrow (flatulence, human or otherwise) to just plain silly (the demonic greeting of “Hell low”). At the same time, Fries smartly lampoons women’s treatment in the workplace; a co-worker patronizingly calls Karen “baby” and “your hot self,” and it’s clear that sexual harassment claims never move beyond the paperwork. As her offbeat adventure continues, Karen earns sympathy, often seeing her sister, Alice, in young Mallory. Karen is also somewhat mysterious since readers initially don’t know much about her, most notably what she did on Earth that fast-tracked her to Hell.
A darkly comic, compelling, and critical tale about family and the never-ending grind.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2021
ISBN: 9798793854405
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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