A sensational cast fuels this exuberant tale that baffles as often as it charms.
Lightsey’s debut fantasy novel follows a teenager, seemingly lost in time, who may be destined to bring peace to hostile nations.
In the modern era, Helena, a 19-year-old witch and the Russian president’s daughter, is held captive by a Georgian army deserter on a boat at sea. She manages to escape her abductor’s clutches, only to wind up overboard and unconscious. When she comes to, she’s safely inside Sarkel Fortress in the year 1361, which is assuredly not the year Helena is from… though her memories are oddly jumbled. The people she encounters there believe that Helena is the new Essenoi, the only one who can defeat Icelos—a nightmare god whose destructive path threatens to incite war between Russia and Georgia. This god’s lair lies within a “phantom” fortress that only appears at a certain time and place. Helena has a shot at finding it with the help of eccentric pickpockets Dogett and Catiana, who have allegedly been there. Surely, she can conjure up a way to destroy the god of nightmares, especially with her book smarts and the new knowledge she unexpectedly picks up in the mid-14th century. Lightsey’s novel overflows with references to classic literature and religious texts, from Shakespeare’s works to the ancient I Ching. The determinedly convoluted plot repeatedly jolts Helena, who’s surprised when discovering she can, for example, read myriad languages. The narrative includes such reliably entertaining genre trademarks as a well-defined quest and fantastical creatures like hobgoblins and pixies. Helena is an appealing, intuitive hero, while her comrades, Dogett and Catiana, deliver abundant humor courtesy of their perpetual bickering and unforgettable insults (“Caluminous, full-gorged measle!”). The sublime ending, though open to interpretation, provides readers with welcome illumination.
A sensational cast fuels this exuberant tale that baffles as often as it charms.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 9781794867437
Page Count: 234
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
