Takes the reader on a gripping journey filled with unexpected twists and turns; a fun, smart read.
Rathod and Kerr’s novel is a fantastical coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old named Howard.
When Howard learns that he has magical abilities—and Rathod and Kerr portray his exploration of his newfound power in very real terms—his life changes. Growing up in an orphanage, the Boy’s Home, Howard knows little of his family background and lineage. The day he discovers his supernatural talents, he accidentally performs a healing spell on an injured child at the Home. The discoveries only get more complex and unique when Howard meets the beautiful and exotic Elisa at the mall. After an encounter in the parking lot with a group of men dressed in black, driving black SUVs and shooting bullets that mysteriously disappear, Howard and Elisa are thrown together in an effort to save their lives. Once it’s been established that the two hail from the same magical realm, they set off on a quest that begins with questions (“Well, what do we do now?”), evolves into confessions (“You want to know the truth? Here it is. I’m a Venefican and I’ve been a magic user my whole life.”) and is finally ignited when the two (along with Elisa’s boyfriend, Jack) begin their search for the Verity Fire. However, the Verity Fire, which Elisa understands will help them prove their worth and save them from becoming prey or victim to the men who tried to chase them down in the mall parking lot, is not easily accessible. First, they don’t know where the fire is located. Second, it is a highly protected source of information. And finally, Howard and Elisa are busy avoiding the men from the mall. It turns out that those men are the Ferreters who, Elisa tells Howard, are determined to destroy the Venefican community because of century-old conflicts that go from the Ancient Egyptians to World War II. Rathod and Kerr have created a believable and compelling character with Howard, our narrator, and Elisa. Howard is sympathetic, authentic and filled with a confusion and awe for this new surreal dimension. The truth about the Ferreters and the Verity Fire is, it turns out, far more complicated than Howard or Elisa could have expected—and this is at the heart of both the story’s journey and its end. The novel uses the discovery of inner power as a tidy metaphor for growing up, while telling an intricately plotted sci-fi tale.
Takes the reader on a gripping journey filled with unexpected twists and turns; a fun, smart read.Pub Date: April 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461001133
Page Count: 320
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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