A dazzling blend of fantasy intrigue and historical drama that will haunt readers long after the final page.
A teenage girl uncovers dark secrets—both earthly and supernatural—in an attempt to rescue her brothers and clear her uncle’s name in Chow’s novel.
The year is 1925, and teenager Ling Shaw works at her uncle Dabak’s medicinal herbal shop in colonial Hong Kong. Tensions are high as the Canton labor strikes are just beginning, and a rash of child disappearances has swept the island. One night, Ling witnesses a woman murdered by a horrific vampirelike creature who rips out the victim’s eyes and stuffs her mouth with mysterious petals. When Dabak is accused of the crime, Ling sets out alongside her best friend and a shady gang member to find the truth. The stakes become even higher when Ling’s twin brothers disappear, and the suspect is none other than the city’s resident oracle—an old woman who may know more than she is letting on. Interspersed with Ling’s story is a series of flashbacks to the year 1923, where a mysterious man encounters visions and voices in the Guianas as those around him die of a mysterious “blood disease.” As the connection between the two stories crystallizes, Ling is forced to make a painful choice that could change his life forever. Chow’s complex character study is part supernatural tale, part historical drama. She deftly moves from the intricacies of real events (like the Canton labor strikes)—and their effects on different characters—to graphic horror scenes that would feel at home in a Stephen King novel: “Rage sent his hands deeper into the beast’s head. Putrid sludge oozed from the obliterated skull. Crimson streamed from the punctures in his own chest. The other shadows slithered closer…” A smooth narrative flow, realistic dialogue, and brisk pacing all conclude with an open-ended but somehow deliciously satisfying ending. Chow ultimately fuses themes of identity, family, and nationality with a terrifying vampire story—all resulting in a bloody good read.
A dazzling blend of fantasy intrigue and historical drama that will haunt readers long after the final page.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781964733036
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Ghastly Goings-On Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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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