A deliberately paced work, but one with an expansive and ultimately engrossing setting.
In Dunker’s fantasy-series starter, a teenager must learn about the world around him and his own destiny.
Seventeen-year-old Red wakes up on the side of the road as a stranger checks him over for injuries. The man introduces himself as Koanga, and Red says that he’s lost his memory and has no clue where he was going, but this isn’t entirely true. Red does know that he escaped a place called Kerek City, and was dumped after a fight—but who he was fighting, he has no idea. Koanga offers to let Red join him and his traveling companion, Willow, at least until the teen recovers his memories and they can find his friends and family. As they travel to the town of Aldi, Red learns more about his new friends, and he soon suspects that they’re more than just tailors—and that they may know something about the location of a murdered ambassador’s missing children. For Red, who’s spent as much of his life as he can remember in Kerek City, learning about other cultures through Koanga’s stories is eye-opening. But how does he know whom to trust in this vast world? In this novel, Dunker introduces a society that’s incredibly focused on its differences, whether they’re physical (Red’s nickname comes from his reddish skin tone, for example) or cultural. Readers are thrown into a vast fictional world with little background information that some may find a bit overwhelming, but this fits in well with Red’s lack of memory and makes him a useful audience surrogate. The book does suffer from a slow start; the narrative does move forward, but it often seems as if little progress is made, with only hints given about characters’ identities and their importance in the story. The author’s worldbuilding shines, however, as it features intricate cultural and belief systems for the various locales and citizenry.
A deliberately paced work, but one with an expansive and ultimately engrossing setting.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 361
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A smart and highly original work of modern fantasy.
After the events of Book of Night (2022), Charlie Hall is forced to hunt down the perpetrator of a terrible massacre.
Charlie Hall is the Hierophant: It’s her job to be tethered to a powerful, independent shadow—a “Blight”— and hunt down other Blights for the Cabals, the heads of their respective shadow-magic specialties. The Cabals use the difficult job of Hierophant as a punishment, but Charlie agreed to take it on so she could be the person tethered to Vince, aka Red, the Blight who posed as a human and ended up dating and falling in love with Charlie. The Cabal leaders used magic to steal the part of Red’s memory that contained his relationship with Charlie, and so Charlie is determined to steal Red’s memories back. And she needs to move fast, because if Red doesn’t remember loving her, he just might be OK with Charlie being killed if it means his own freedom. Meanwhile, Mr. Punch, a terrifying Cabal leader who specializes in using shadow magic to possess other people’s bodies, has a job for Charlie: He wants her to find the culprit behind a terrible massacre that was attributed to a cult. He suspects that the people were actually killed by a Blight, and he doesn’t want the Cabals to face the blowback if the truth becomes public. Mr. Punch could do terrible things to Charlie if she fails, but if she succeeds, he’ll help Charlie and Red be free of the Cabals for good. The sophomore novel in a series is always tough, but this sequel proves that the second book can be even better than the first. Black turns the screws on the magical world she set up in Book 1, creating complicated political motives between Charlie and the Cabal leaders and making the question of what it means for a shadow, like Red, to have their own consciousness more interesting. Veteran con artist Charlie makes some truly brilliant moves, especially toward the end, where the last few chapters have one terrific surprise after the other.
A smart and highly original work of modern fantasy.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781250812223
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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