A creative, diverse, and very personal gift.
Muze’ offers a curious collage of works about love in this series-starter.
This opening volume centers on a fantasy story of “the gods” and “the universe” working together to make sure that “two hearts” remain “entwined in love.” The story follows Marici’O, an Italian king who “rules with the heart of a lion,” yet “is as gentle as a butterfly.” After the king’s beloved wife, Queen Gelsomina, dies, Marici’O falls deeply in love with one of his subjects, a “gypsy ballerina” named Dahli’a who lost her husband, Marco, to a heart attack while she was performing during their wedding at Lake Como. Later, King Marici’O soon goes into battle in full armor against an unnamed enemy and is gravely wounded, but the couple’s love story continues, and they start a family. Overall, the author’s storytelling style offers an eclectic mix of idiomatic language (“Once in a blue moon”) and elevated description that gestures toward mysticism (“Marco continued with a heavy heart, trying to be as gentle as possible with her heart”). Several short notes and poems scattered throughout the piece seem to indicate that the story is a bespoke work for the author’s lover, and it feels intended to appeal to that highly specific audience. Muze’ also intersperses poetry and quotations from various writers on the theme of love. The similarly wide-ranging selection includes work by Las Vegas writer Omoehi Ehixojie, aphorist Robert Brault, the Roman poet Catullus, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and painter Edgar Degas; the book also includes the “Author’s Lover’s Poem” and even an excerpt of dialogue from the film Meet Joe Black (1998). The work is also intended be read with a soundtrack of classical music, each carefully selected to pair with a “specific chapter or paragraph”; the playlist includes works by Jules Massenet, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and other orchestral composers.
A creative, diverse, and very personal gift.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798901740965
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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