A profoundly felt story, unfortunately conveyed in somewhat stilted prose.
In the first of a series, a young woman with a deadly magical power chooses family, safety, and pragmatism over national loyalty.
Yang Ruying has been “blessed by Death”: She has the power to steal the life force from those she touches, although she pays a physical price for using her power. But the magical gifts she shares with some of her countrymen were not enough to protect the Empire of Er-Lang (which resembles a part of China) from occupiers traveling from another universe, where Rome never fell but developed high-tech weaponry and medicine over the centuries. A rash theft brings Ruying to the attention of the youngest Roman prince, Antony Augustus, who coerces Ruying into becoming his personal assassin. Antony claims that her killings on his behalf will ensure peace and a future for both their worlds. Ruying’s need to keep her grandmother, her rebellion-minded twin sister, and herself safe, plus her growing feelings for Antony, help to quiet her doubts, even as her guilt for the blood on her hands increases. Inspired by the Russian and Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the novel is an interesting look inside the mind of a collaborator; while Ruying hates the occupiers, she simply does not believe the rebel forces led by the mysterious Phantom have the power to defeat the Romans, and prefers to snatch what security she can in a bloody, desperate world. As a result, she works very hard to try not to think about what is happening to her people—especially those with magic. Readers may find the writing somewhat heavy going; the author is striving for a poetic style that doesn’t entirely land. For example, a distraught Ruying thinks, “A part of me that I couldn’t bandage or balm fissured slowly like thin ice cracking under weight, and the frigid blue waters beneath waited eagerly to drown me in their bitter depths.” The author also spends a great deal of time describing Ruying’s feelings—time that might be more effectively spent showing her actions as Antony’s assassin, which are more summarized than described in any detail.
A profoundly felt story, unfortunately conveyed in somewhat stilted prose.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593722244
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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