A vividly descriptive and shockingly brutal fantasy story that leaves readers hanging.
In Beckman’s debut novel, a 1940s Englishman undergoes a profound transformation after he’s imprisoned in a bizarre subterranean maze.
As this dark fantasy begins, writer and editor Brian Renwick is spirited away from 1947 London to a bleak underground domain, where he becomes the property of the seemingly all-powerful “Uncle,” ruler of the Iron Labyrinth, where his minions mine and forge pyrite. Brian painfully learns that Uncle wields absolute control, requiring obedience of mind, body, and soul of his prisoners. As Uncle tells him, “I want you exquisitely alive to my demands. I want you [to] try to discover a new heartbeat, one that pulses for me alone.” Uncle’s punishments for lapses are savage, but the grievously injured and dismembered are healed by a magical blue light, andthe dead are resurrected. Despite the grindingly hard work, Brian’s strength grows through gladiator-style training sessions, fraught but mind-expanding interviews with Uncle, and other otherworldly encounters. The prisoner has all but accepted that Uncle is breaking him down in order to forge him into a weapon for an unnamed purpose—until a shattering betrayal occurs. This is an overly ambitious but wildly imaginative tale. The prose is often vivid, as when Brian climbs up a tower, “driven by a force he could neither mollify nor stop,” and many scenes are striking.The story’s sadomasochistic dynamic is disturbingly effective but not for the faint of heart; it encompasses bestial sex and, in one case, a horrific rape on a lakeshore. There’s also an overabundance of fantastical plot points that make for a bumpy read, including manifestations of the biblical Tree of Life and the Goddess of Pyrite; shape-shifting; extraterrestrial royalty; dimension- and time-hopping; amnesia; and cryptic utterances from seen and unseen entities. Too many unanswered questions distract: What is Roche Brooks, Brian’s best friend back in London, being groomed for? Is Uncle connected to Brian’s lonely childhood? Why are Uncle’s minions being trained in ancient fighting techniques? What is the Uncle-defying power that lurks in the labyrinth’s ominous mist? A sequel, however, might offer answers to these question.
A vividly descriptive and shockingly brutal fantasy story that leaves readers hanging.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5320-8901-5
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Iuniverse Inc
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game.
When you deal with the darkness, everything has a price.
“Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Adeline tried to heed this warning, but she was desperate to escape a wedding she didn’t want and a life spent trapped in a small town. So desperate that she didn’t notice the sun going down. And so she made a deal: For freedom, and time, she will surrender her soul when she no longer wants to live. But freedom came at a cost. Adeline didn’t want to belong to anyone; now she is forgotten every time she slips out of sight. She has spent 300 years living like a ghost, unable even to speak her own name. She has affairs with both men and women, but she can never have a comfortable intimacy built over time—only the giddy rush of a first meeting, over and over again. So when she meets a boy who, impossibly, remembers her, she can’t walk away. What Addie doesn’t know is why Henry is the first person in 300 years who can remember her. Or why Henry finds her as compelling as she finds him. And, of course, she doesn’t know how the devil she made a deal with will react if he learns that the rules of their 300-year-long game have changed. This spellbinding story unspools in multiple timelines as Addie moves through history, learning the rules of her curse and the whims of her captor. Meanwhile, both Addie and the reader get to know Henry and understand what sets him apart. This is the kind of book you stay up all night reading—rich and satisfying and strange and impeccably crafted.
Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8756-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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PERSPECTIVES
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SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful and terrifying; Moreno-Garcia hits it out of the park yet again.
A graduate student studying an obscure horror author is visited by a haunting of her own.
Minerva Contreras, one of the protagonists of Mexican Canadian author Moreno-Garcia’s latest, has always had a thing for the dark side. As a girl in Mexico, she “preferred to slip into the tales of Shirley Jackson rather than go out dancing with her friends,” and as a grad student in 1998 Massachusetts, she’s writing her thesis on Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure horror author and H.P. Lovecraft contemporary who only published one novel during her lifetime, The Vanishing. Beatrice was an alum of the college where Minerva studies, but Minerva still struggles to find information about her, until one of Beatrice’s acquaintances, Carolyn Yates, agrees to let Minerva examine Beatrice’s personal papers, which contain the author’s account of the disappearance of her college roommate, a quirky Spiritualist named Virginia Somerset. As Minerva tries to figure out what happened to Virginia, things start getting weird—she starts hearing strange noises, and begins to wonder whether a student who went AWOL actually met with a bad end. She also begins to notice parallels between what’s happening and the stories she heard from her great-grandmother Alba, whose family endured horrific experiences at the hands of a witch in Mexico in 1908. The point of view shifts among Minerva, Alba, and Beatrice in their various time periods, a technique which Moreno-Garcia uses effectively; it’s impressive how she keeps the narrative tension running parallel in each one. The writing is beautiful, which is par for the course for Moreno-Garcia, and in Minerva, she has created a deeply original character, steely but yearning. This is yet another triumph from one of North America’s most exciting authors.
Suspenseful and terrifying; Moreno-Garcia hits it out of the park yet again.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780593874325
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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