A pulpy, haunted novel that fails to land its final punch.
In Miller’s debut paranormal novel, a heavy-drinking former prizefighter discovers a supernatural talent for combating ghosts.
When New Englander Albrecht Drue was struck by a Coca-Cola truck eight years ago, it ended his burgeoning boxing career. The accident also won him enough settlement money to allow him to while away nearly a decade, spending his time boozing, brawling, and mooning over Charlene, the diligent bartender of a local watering hole known as the Cyclops. On the night Al receives his final settlement check—and the devastating news that Charlene is getting back together with her flaky DJ boyfriend—he goes on a bender and gets in a bar fight that spills out of the Cyclops and leaves Al stranded in Jennings Heights, the most destitute part of town. After seeking shelter in an abandoned building haunted by the ghost of pimp Silky Cobra Watkins, Al discovers that he has a crucial talent: He can punch ghosts straight into heaven, hell, or oblivion. It turns out that Al isn’t the only one engaging with the spirit word. Dax Vagance of the TV show Ghost Quest has secretly dragged his crew of hangers-on to town to discover exactly what’s lurking out at Cardinal’s Crest—the centuries-old, abandoned fortress on Bitburg’s outskirts known as the “most haunted site in America that no one’s ever heard of.” If Dax’s hunch is right, he’s about to reveal a spiritual bombshell that could save his show and reaffirm his own faith in the supernatural. But the Bitburg Supernatural Squad, Al’s drinking buddies, are desperate to convince Dax of the real danger of Cardinal’s Crest—a place from which no one has ever returned alive.
Al’s world bursts onto the page in Miller’s vibrant, spirited prose. Each line is rich with bloody, shadowy images and the brisk banter of bar regulars. Despite Al’s flaws and predilections, readers will root for him to triumph over undead evil and his own personal demons. Al’s careful, consistent kindness to the weak and the powerless provides a rewarding counterweight to his willingness to throw punches. The action sequences are grotesque, visceral, and inventive, with deaths served up in a variety of spine-chilling, bloody ways (“bodies bursting with a rush of flash-fried meat and gore”). Miller does strong work in portraying the shadowy spiritual underbelly of daily life in Bitburg. But for all the punchiness punctuating Al’s experiences, the dark humor sometimes falls flat. The violence, particularly against women, feels gratuitous and gets played for increasingly bitter laughs. Miller’s sharp asides are sometimes deliciously ironic but often needlessly, hollowly provocative. The chaotic, gritty, and Technicolor nature of Al’s world makes for a propulsive read, but this momentum crashes out in a rushed conclusion that will leave readers with far more questions than satisfying answers. The vast cast of supporting characters is intriguing, but it suffers from underdevelopment. The question of why so many of these personalities have lingered for years in the Cyclops’ boozy embrace also remains unclear.
A pulpy, haunted novel that fails to land its final punch.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2021
ISBN: 9784294298930
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Montag Press
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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