An absorbing, character-driven tale with supernatural touches and series potential.
In Troy’s debut novel, two families in the late 19th century bring secrets and magic to an island.
Amadeo Roselyn, worried about his family’s safety in the era just after Reconstruction, moves them from New Orleans to the isle of Touperdu, where vacant buildings await them, one for a home and the other for a restaurant they plan to open. Amadeo has the money to set up a business, but he doesn’t necessarily want the locals to know the source of his funds. Around the same time, the Duday family, hailing from a French village, make their way to the island as well. Mathieu and Gwennoelle, along with their children, harbor special abilities—for one thing, they can see ghosts, including the previous owner of their new house. Their magic isn’t common knowledge, but it’s also not something they can keep from their fellow islanders indefinitely; soon, Gwennoelle is known as a “seeress.” Troy’s intriguing, eclectic cast is fleshed out with distinctive details; Gwennoelle saves the family money by swiping small items, while Amadeo’s wife, Hortense, seems to suffer from an undiagnosed mental condition tied to anxiety. There’s also Madame Reckoner, who found the spot for Amadeo’s restaurant and whose family has long been engaged in a well-known feud with the Bonneys, an old island clan. The supernatural elements are organically woven into the story; interactions with ghosts (or other bits of magic) are everyday occurrences for the Dudays. The various subplots include several unexpected turns, from mysterious deaths to an outright murder. Some narrative threads don’t really lead anywhere, however, and some of the characters either fade into the background or disappear altogether. Still, the welcome lightheartedness of the kids, predominantly young Laurette Duday and Peony “Pinny” Roselyn, couples well with the author’s wry humor. (Madame Reckoner’s idea of a compliment: “You are not a miserable whining sot like my son.”)
An absorbing, character-driven tale with supernatural touches and series potential.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9798897400089
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Sibylline Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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