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
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
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
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