A deeply imagined fable of faith and revolt.
In Carnes’ debut fantasy novel, a willful girl leads a rebellion against the religious status quo.
Before Gaelle was a heretical nun being held in a prison cell suspended high in the air, she was just a girl. Her mother died in childbirth, and her woodsman father raised her with the help of her mother’s sister, her wise aunt Jillian. When Gaelle is 15, her father is killed by a horse. By the law of the Imperial Church of Esaosh, the strict religion that governs Gaelle’s homeland of Celd, the horse is to be put to death, and the horse’s owner, Wilm, is to be beaten. It falls to Gaelle to carry out the punishment herself, and when she refuses, she learns that there are consequences for those who disobey: “If the victim doesn’t immediately carry out the law, the victim becomes a criminal.” Gaelle is willing to live as an outlaw, though she doesn’t yet know what that entails; Jillian, who bears a brand burned onto her chest for her own trespasses against Church law, has a better idea. Together, they question more deeply the tenets of the faith that was forced upon them, eventually discovering a new god to worship. Will the Church suffer these heretics to live, or will they be forced to bring down the Church itself? The narration shifts back and forth between the perspective of an elderly Gaelle in her prison and her younger self. Carnes unspools both threads with entrancing lyricism, as here, when the older woman describes the bird who roosts with her in her cage: “This co-sunning is the closest the bird has allowed me to get to him, so far. What I consider sharing might actually amount to his version of a territory war, but he doesn’t hiss or posture. When the warmth makes him redolent, he smells a little of dust.” It’s a slow, thoughtful book, one that takes both its characters and the systems that ensnare them seriously. While the pacing may be a bit too leisurely for some, patient readers will be rewarded.
A deeply imagined fable of faith and revolt.Pub Date: March 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798988120308
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Family of Light Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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