An engaging, meditative, globe-trotting tale that ultimately reinforces the presence of spiritual forces.
In this novel, a billionaire widower, angry that religion didn’t save his cancer-stricken wife, recruits a teenage Indian girl to test the truth of spiritual revelation.
In Paris, Michael Sergeant asks Professor Dufort, the “world’s leading expert on the critique of religion,” how the “age of faith” can be ended. Michael desires this due to the death of his wife, Celeste, whom he met when he was her private-jet pilot. When Celeste was diagnosed with cancer, the couple explored various faith systems: Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and others. By the time they got to Islam, Michael’s hope in faith had faded, and Celeste soon died in a hospital. While Dufort tells him that “all the money in the world will not fund enough research to bring down religion,” Michael, now “heir to over a billion pounds,” decides to set up someone in the same circumstances that led Muhammad to have a spiritual revelation in a cave. Michael, working with various helpers, brings 17-year-old Hamida Begum, an orphan living in India with her grandmother, to his estate in Cumbria. A nearby cave is prepared, but Hamida first travels with Maurice Dufort, the professor’s researcher nephew, whom Michael has hired to educate and seduce her. Hamida’s grandmother always told her that she had a special destiny as a descendant of the Mughal imperial line. Now, the teen starts to experience more of the world as well as her own mystical powers. Then her time in the cave produces a “result” that surprisingly reconnects Michael to Celeste. Imady packs a lot of destinations and historical/religious threads into this ambitious novel. This makes for somewhat dizzying reading at times, although the book will pique readers’ interest to learn more about the Mughal Empire. Some of the story’s mechanics are fuzzy—how do Michael’s helpers come to pick Hamida, and were they fully aware of her special qualities? Still, the tale’s core—Hamida and Maurice connecting—is a rather sweet and touching romance, a reflection of the overriding power of love that is the engrossing story’s overall message.
An engaging, meditative, globe-trotting tale that ultimately reinforces the presence of spiritual forces.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2022
ISBN: 9781940178592
Page Count: 303
Publisher: VILLA MAGNA PUBLISHING
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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