The grown-up Peter Pan sequel readers needed all along.
A pair of former Lost Boys return to the Island to steal a famous fairy.
Peter’s roster of Lost Boys never changes; when one Boy grows up, Peter simply collects another to take his name and place. That rule once allowed unrelated best friends Jordan and Baron to join as “the Twins.” Sure, Jordan had to pretend to be a boy and use Dust to glamour her missing hand, but it was worth it for a life on the Island. Years after her first menstrual period outed her and nearly cost her her life, Jordan is a famed underground fighter with a mean drug addiction. Half a decade of heavy Dust use has left her reliant on a street drug—and the landlord-dealer who supplies it—to get by. Determined to get out from under his thumb, Jordan hatches a plan to return to the Island with Baron and steal Tink from Peter. Complicating her endeavor is the fact that no grown-up has ever gone to the Island and lived to tell the tale. But Jordan may just be the only person ambitious enough to succeed. And when she takes up the pirate captain’s hook, well, that’s where the story really takes off. Low walks a knife’s edge here, remaining faithful to Barrie’s original work while transplanting it into an invented world. The novel showcases the brutality of the Lost Boys’ existence, as members of their little tribe kill wantonly. Peter comes off as particularly frightening here. Readers will recall his line in Barrie’s novel, “I forget them after I kill them,” as they watch him cull the followers who have grown too old and make Dust from his victims’ ground bones. Intersectionality abounds. Jordan has a congenital limb difference and a complicated relationship to her gender identity. Baron lives with intense anxiety, as well as suicidal ideations. Both heroes are Chinese-coded.
The grown-up Peter Pan sequel readers needed all along.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780316569200
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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
A freewheeling, action-packed fantasy with a dash of romance.
Kova offers a fantasy novel set beyond the Nightgale Mountains in the walled fortress of Vinguard where citizens live in fear of the next deadly dragon attack.
Vinguard’s residents are always on guard against the threat of dragons, but they must watch more than just the skies. Living among them, hiding in plain sight, are the “dragon cursed”—people who, at any moment, may transform into terrifying winged beasts and destroy the city from within. For most of Isola Thaz’s life, she’s been told she’s the reincarnated savior of Vinguard. But just as she begins to suspect that she may be dragon cursed, she’s tossed into Vinguard’s Tribunal—a contest in which every 18-year-old competes in tests of skill and might to separate loyal citizens from the dragon cursed. As she’s sequestered for this rite of passage, Isola hesitantly allies herself with a handsome fellow competitor named Lucan. However, as the teens face such trials as fire-breathing automatons (“The silver beast comes to life with a swing. Its claws shear through the dim light”), starvation, and actual dragons while unarmed, Isola begins to feel that Vinguard’s traditions come at a cost that’s too steep. Meanwhile, Vicar Darius, Lucan’s father and the leader of Vinguard’s shadowy theocracy, the Creed, is desperate to take Isola’s powers for himself—and, to that end, he puts her into increasingly tortuous situations. However, neither he, nor Isola’s teenage rivals, are very compelling antagonists; instead, they come across as caricatures of cruelty. Still, the novel is fast-paced and action-oriented with a punchy prose that prioritizes movement over fantasy aesthetics. A sometimes-fraught romance between Isola and Lucan slowly blooms, but Isola’s relationship with her family forms the true emotional core of the narrative. Although the worldbuilding in fairly simple, the story sets up a massive mystery that promises big payoffs in a potential future installment.
A freewheeling, action-packed fantasy with a dash of romance.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781649377838
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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