An intriguing but uneven fantasy with a compelling, expansive world and an awkward plot.
A dead trafficker starts dealing a drug found in the afterlife in Mobuogwu’s urban fantasy novel.
Andrew “AJ” Jackson is a low-level drug dealer selling weed and party drugs at a local college. When he’s suspected of giving the cops information, he’s murdered in front of his mother and sister. If AJ thought death would get him out of the drug-running game, he was sorely mistaken: The kingpin of the operation, Governor Reginald Tyson, has plans for AJ to traffic a different sort of product, now that he’s deceased. Upon waking after being shot, AJ finds himself in Animmo, a place for the dead (“No, Mr. Jackson, you’re not dreaming”), where he feels no emotions, no pain, nothing. Before he can get settled into what will become his new home, he is visited by Kester McKean, a fellow dealer in life who now mentors AJ in collecting and delivering a strange substance being sold in the land of the living as the drug “skooches.” AJ might not feel anything anymore, but his mother and sister are still in danger if he doesn’t comply, even if he doesn’t like the collection process. Among the living, Detective Maleek Shapiro is investigating an increasing number of deaths tied to this new street drug, and the name “Reginald” keeps coming up. Researching skooches, its dealers, and various other crimes connected to it leads to Maleek working with the Feds on their ongoing investigation. In this dark urban fantasy novel, Mobuogwu compellingly unspools a winding tale of drugs, death, and dark forces. The world of Animmo is a fascinating one, with lore and practices that could have used more explanation—for example, readers learn how the drug delivery system works, but not how it was discovered. With so much happening on both planes of existence, a less complicated narrative, or one more intensely focused on certain aspects, would have made this complicated narrative easier to digest.
An intriguing but uneven fantasy with a compelling, expansive world and an awkward plot.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798991841801
Page Count: 305
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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
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