An imaginative, if uneven, blend of contemporary thriller and medieval fantasy.
In Pace’s novel, a geologist’s son discovers his father’s mysterious legacy may hold the key to a legendary Arctic cave—and an origin story for a very familiar holiday figure.
Nick Landowski works as a Nevada mine foreman, still haunted by his adoptive father Virgil’s disappearance 18 years ago during a doomed Arctic expedition while searching for a mythical diamond cave. When a workplace accident splits open a geode that Virgil left him, Nick discovers a hidden safe-deposit box key. Accompanied by best friend, Bodie Williams, Nick’s cross-country quest to unlock his father’s secrets becomes complicated when the bank requires him to answer an impossible security question to open the box: “What is the third ingredient in the secret formula for Coca Cola?” The real adventure begins much later when Nick finds himself transported from a cave to 11th-century Scotland and travels to Greenland; he encounters a village of little people, Norse raiders, an evil sorcerer named Zebula, and the woman he’s falling for—Anna Duncan, his former boss’s niece, who’s also been mysteriously pulled back in time. Pace also creates a Santa Claus origin story that eschews “singing elves-dancing candy cane” territory for something grittier and more ambitious. The modern-day Nevada mining setting establishes Nick as a capable protagonist before the narrative pivots into time-hopping territory featuring magical amulets and diamond-studded caves. The contrived Coca-Cola subplot saps the urgency when the story requires Nick to unlock his dad’s secrets. Although Pace maintains momentum with energetic action sequences, the Norse captivity section drags and convenient coincidences strain credibility. Nick and Anna develop genuine chemistry despite their improbable circumstances, although dialogue wavers between medieval affectation and contemporary quips. Supporting characters, such as the loyal Bodie, add warmth, but villain Zebula tends toward the cartoonish. The sprawling ambition of this novel’s mythology will appeal to readers willing to embrace the genre-hopping chaos. However, the execution doesn’t quite live up to the inventive premise.
An imaginative, if uneven, blend of contemporary thriller and medieval fantasy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A unique concept that promises readers will find at least one, if not three, entwined but different narratives to enjoy.
When Vis is copied into two other realities, he must stop a god from repeatedly culling almost everyone back home.
Thousands of years ago, to prevent the Concurrence from enslaving everyone, the world was split into three near-identical copies: Res, Obiteum, and Luceum. To exist in all three worlds, to wield Will there, is to achieve synchronism. After the events in The Will of the Many (2023), which cost Vis his arm and the life of his friend, Vis achieves Synchronism. While Res-Vis must continue to play Hierarchy politics to find his friend’s killer, Obiteum-Vis finds a ruined world, where the dead are reanimated and used by Ka, the Concurrence, and the only other person to exist in synchronism. Meanwhile, Luceum-Vis is forced into a dispute between druids, their High Council, and their kings—with one king intent on killing him—and Vis has no idea why. On all worlds, Vis is as shrewd as ever, weighing his options, planning ahead, and doing what he must to survive. However, he, too, slowly diverges, doing things he swore he never would: cede his Will, use Will to control someone else, and reveal his true name. If at least one Vis cannot use his synchronism and power of Will to kill the Concurrence, no Vis will be safe, and another Cataclysm will cull those he loves on Res. Book Two of the Hierarchy series is a speculative fantasy that is at once Egyptian post-apocalyptic, Celtic medieval, and Roman dystopian, thanks to the multidimensional setting. Although the sprawling narrative at times overextends itself, Islington rewards patient readers with a compelling story, a cast of complex and diverse characters, and a glimpse into how far a good man can go before he’s lost. A symbol at the start of each chapter delineates which world and Vis it’s about. Readers should read The Will of the Many before attempting this volume, or they may be confused for the first several chapters and beyond.
A unique concept that promises readers will find at least one, if not three, entwined but different narratives to enjoy.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781982141233
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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