Quippy and crass with lots of passion but far from a light read—expect some emotional whiplash and the desire for more.
In this debut fantasy romance, a princess in hiding teams up with an unlikely ally to take back what’s rightfully hers.
Elowen Atarah is not your average princess. When dragon eggs hatched for her, she was proclaimed to be “forged from the fire of the gods.” But instead of celebrating her dragon bond, her father put her in chains, seeing her as a threat. Elowen escapes after years of torment—but without her dragons. Exiled but finally free of her father’s cruelty, Elowen learns to fight and becomes a deadly force with the intention of getting her dragons back. This opportunity arrives in the form of Cayden Veles, commander of the neighboring kingdom. Cayden and Elowen have a common enemy—her father. An alliance is forged, and with the help of Cayden and her most trusted friends, Elowen seeks her chance at revenge and rebirth. Darling combines the thrill of the heist à la Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows with the dragon lore of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree while throwing in a lot more violence and sex. The premise of battling kingdoms fighting a revenge-seeking exiled dragon queen flies close to Game of Thrones territory—but this is romance at its core. Worldbuilding and warmongering take a back seat to the fire building between Elowen and her ally turned lover. Cayden is quick to use the threat of murder to protect Elowen as proof of his love—“Even if a man even hardly touches you, it’ll be the last thing he does in this life.” While the gratuitous violence may be a turnoff—heed the author’s note on trigger warnings—the first-person narration eliminates much of the discomfort factor. Elowen’s perspective is clear: Cayden’s darkness matches her own. For the first time, the dichotomies within herself make sense and she feels seen. The one thing more unbelievable than how quickly Cayden starts calling Elowen “love” is how often Elowen denies their relationship is anything more than an alliance. Clunky attempts at building tension aside, Darling deserves credit for managing to resolve this power struggle in a way that celebrates Elowen’s return to confidence and strength.
Quippy and crass with lots of passion but far from a light read—expect some emotional whiplash and the desire for more.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593873892
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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
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
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