A striking tale of violence and redemption with an abundance of mysterious dream/nightmare imagery.
In a post-apocalyptic world swept by a plague, two young women search for their missing mentor, lost in an infected landscape.
Fantasy/SF author Jessup conjures up a fever-dream, chaotic, dystopian environment that might be future Earth, distant-past Earth, or maybe another colonized planet in this novel; it is difficult to judge. Humans seem to have forgotten most of their history, terrorized and diminished as they are by the “curse,” the tag given to a grotesque plague of unknown nature that afflicts not only flesh, but also inorganic objects (entire buildings, in fact) and, possibly, reality itself. Animals and people tend to transform painfully into monstrous, destructive, multiheaded chimeras (many others seem to become zombies—though that genre buzzword is never used). Defending against the horror is a sisterhood of “seers,” female orphans who dwell in a labyrinth of bones and train in combat archery, dancing rites, and curious healing arts, communing with the world’s “ghosts.” The seers can forestall, if not completely cure, the curse, a principal method being the forcible insertion of a precious “ghost heart” (and, sometimes, a few butterflies) into a victim’s tortured body. Mazi and Talia, two young temple acolytes, have left the labyrinth in search of Naomi, a missing older seer whom they regard as a mother figure. The quest grows more desperate when Mazi, wounded, realizes she is infected by the dreaded curse. Jessup’s prose sometimes recalls Harlan Ellison at his most extravagant, invoking a lurid, elastic environment steeped in ritual yet with delirious magic as well as weird science. A space-based artificial intelligence called the Dzall figures into the equation, and some characters and entities may be robots, androids, or nanotechnology creations. Expect no firm answers or solid exposition by the time the narrative arc (a rather simple one, when all is said and done) reaches its cathartic conclusion. Just go with the vivid flow of descriptions of entropic desolation and phantasmagoric filigree: “The hollow stones were a mess of geometry on the side of the hill. Trees seemed to back away from them, and the air smelled like pine and earth and fungal things spreading out underground.”
A striking tale of violence and redemption with an abundance of mysterious dream/nightmare imagery.Pub Date: April 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952283-09-3
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Vernacular Books
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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