A dreamy assortment of tales that contain kernels of worldly truth.
Wilkie presents a collection of seven short stories set in a fantastical realm of magic, danger, and profound lessons.
The common thread weaving through these tales is that they all take place in the imaginary Kingdom of Imlay, a coastal locale where magic and spirits exist alongside humans. Beyond that, each tale is unique in its characters, morals, and adventures. The collection opens with “The River Keeper,” featuring the bright and outspoken child Ya, who reports to her mother, Myranda, that the river dividing Imlay into its northern and southern provinces is cloudy and “sick.” The local Council approves an expedition to follow the waters east to discover the source of its sickness. Myranda leads the exploratory group, but Ya is the true hero when she finds the legendary River Keeper and receives a monumental responsibility that will change her life. In what may be the book’s most haunting offering, “A Dream for a Dream,” children and adults are inexplicably separated from one another: “The Children didn’t know their parents. In fact, they didn’t know what parents were….Every so often, a new Child would appear in their midst. No one questioned this because they had each, in their own turn, appeared in a similar manner.” The children begin having cryptic dreams that may hold the key to where they are and from where they came. “The Day After Tomorrow”is perhaps the book’s most traditional offering: a tale of a king who wishes to see the future in order to prevent disaster and to better rule his kingdom. When a court magician grants his wish, the monarch discovers that there’s a price to be paid for such a gift.
Although the subject matter varies, Wilkie infuses a similar dreamlike feel throughout all seven tales by incorporating elements of the magical alongside the realistic. Often, the reader must wait a bit to encounter the particular magic of a given story, creating a kind of tension that generates momentum. Wilkie’s writing style is simple yet effective, with a slight tendency toward the old-fashioned, as in “The Day After Tomorrow”: “One particular morning in midsummer, the King woke with the dawn bell in a cold sweat and a dreadful premonition.” Each work is accompanied by Alemanno’s occasional black-and-white sketches, adding to the wispy, ethereal tone that permeates the collection. The beliefs expressed are familiar ones, such as the importance of taking care of the earth (in the title story, which may strike readers as reminiscent of some Native American folklore) and the price of greed (“The Pit of Truth,” whose talking animals lend it a particularly mythic feel). Some readers may find the morals to be familiar to the point of being redundant, but they do make the stories feel like fairy tales that have been passed down from one generation to another. Although readers don’t get much time to get to know and love the protagonists, the strength of the narratives lies in their imaginative takes on well-worn lessons.
A dreamy assortment of tales that contain kernels of worldly truth.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798891382022
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Subplot Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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