A great start to a fantasy duology featuring well-developed characters and settings.
The fates of a warrior princess and a royal guard entangle in Solomon’s series-starting romantic fantasy novel.
Cecelia is eldest child of King Filip of the Archipelago of the Moons and the presumed heir to the kingdom, despite that fact that her mother is not the queen. She always felt like an outsider in her own family, especially as she doesn’t know the truth regarding her late mother’s identity. She was brought up to be a fierce warrior and a brilliant strategist, so when her father, who has visions, tells her to travel with her brother to the kingdom of Korith to investigate a looming threat, she accepts her mission—even when he tells her she’ll likely never return home. Viktor is the kinsguard of Korith’s young monarch, and a remarkably skilled fighter who’s killed many men during his service. He’s assigned the role of bodyguard to visiting princess Cecelia and her young sibling. Viktor’s frustration increases when he becomes romantically infatuated with Cecelia. Despite their mutual attraction, the pair find themselves unwillingly thrown together by an arranged marriageand caught in the middle of a chaotic political plot and popular rebellion. As their newly formed bond is tested, Cecelia and Viktor come to realize there are plenty of secrets hidden in Korith’s history. Solomon’s first entry in the Dual Moons duology features chapters that focus alternately on Cecelia and Viktor, which is an effective narrative strategy. They ably introduce the two complex main characters as they both struggle with questions of identity and duty, as well as their romantic feelings for each other: “Fragile hearts…need tender care,” Cecelia whispers to Viktor at one point. “Your loneliness can keep mine company.” Their love story builds in an intricately developed fictional world; the story delves into religion and politics, examining the oppression of a people and the lengths to which people will go to gain power. The author also makes the intriguing choice to separate the characters with two road trips to explore the internal dynamics of a frayed kingdom.
A great start to a fantasy duology featuring well-developed characters and settings.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 979-8987942017
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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