Suspenseful, philosophical, and inventive, this sparkling novel explores the power of memory and love.
Napoleon conquered England in this time-travel/alt-history fantasy set at the turns of the 19th and 20th centuries.
When Joe Tournier steps off a train from Glasgow in Londres in 1898, he can remember his name but very little else. He’s suffering from “silent epilepsy,” a doctor tells him, which is characterized not by the usual convulsions but by symptoms associated with epileptic auras: amnesia, paramnesia, visions. Paramnesia is “the blurring of something imaginary and something real,” explains the doctor, giving what might work equally well as a definition of fiction, particularly of Pulley’s favored fantasy genre. In the time-travel subgenre, of course, there are better explanations than epilepsy for déjà vu (“the sense you’ve seen something new before”) and its opposite, jamais vu (“when something that should be familiar feels wholly alien”). Joe’s master retrieves him from the hospital—like most people of English descent under the reign of Napoleon IV, Joe is enslaved—and takes him home to Joe’s wife, who is not the same woman as Madeline, the wife Joe believes he remembers. A postcard delivered almost a century after it’s mailed sends Joe north to the Outer Hebrides on a quest to learn about his forgotten past and perhaps find Madeline. There, he passes through a time portal into the middle of the Napoleonic War at a point when victory hangs in the balance—and when previous temporal crossings have already made that balance wobble and spin. Missouri Kite, an officer in the Royal Navy, and his sister and ship’s surgeon, Agatha Castlereagh, hope to use information and technology from the future to win the war for the British. Is it too late to change history? Can Joe help Kite and Agatha without changing the future so much that he endangers the toddler daughter he left behind in 1900—or indeed, his own existence? As scenes spiral back and forth between centuries, the book’s emotional center crystallizes around a fundamental mystery: Who, in fact, is Joe? All time-travel plots are fraught with paradox, but not all rise to Pulley’s level of tricky cleverness, and few of those trickily clever books rise to her level of emotional intensity.
Suspenseful, philosophical, and inventive, this sparkling novel explores the power of memory and love.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63557-608-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doesn’t entirely hang together but still manages to hit the spot.
In an alternate early-20th-century Montreal, sparks fly between the operator of a cat shelter and a reclusive magician.
Agnes Aubert is not kindly disposed toward magicians, especially not after a magical duel blows a hole in the building that housed her and her cat shelter. Unfortunately, finding another spot isn’t easy, so she’s happy to take the reasonably priced location on the Rue des Hirondelles. But that’s before she discovers the building’s owner secretly living in the basement: Havelock Renard, the world’s most powerful magician, who also happens to be allergic to cats. As this decidedly odd couple work out a system for cohabitation, Agnes develops some uncomfortable feelings for Havelock; she also can’t deny her attraction to the police detective who thinks (not entirely incorrectly) that the shelter is a front for the illegal sale of magical Artefacts. In comparison to the carefully constructed universe of her Emily Wildeseries, Fawcett’s worldbuilding and plotting are a bit sloppy; the magical system is not laid out as clearly as more pedantic readers might wish, and there’s one part of Agnes’ quandary that gets resolved in a rushed, not truly believable, way. The book also implausibly suggests that an allergy to cats is curable by exposure (rather than managed by a magical antihistamine, perhaps?). But one has to admire the author’s acumen in finding the absolute sweet spot for a cozy fantasy, after all the other ones set in cafes and adorable little shops. It could seem either twee or a cynical grab at the market, but it’s neither; Fawcett clearly understands the complicated but rewarding relationship between humans and cats. It is also charming to set a story in Montreal, where both brioches and bagels are on offer.
Doesn’t entirely hang together but still manages to hit the spot.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593973257
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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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