An often-engaging fictional exploration of the topic of mortality.
In Harju-Autti’s debut fantasy novel, a crew’s mid-18th-century trading voyage leads them to a strange island whose residents harbor curious views on love and death.
Veteran seaman Capt. Julius Hawthorne had settled in Glasgow to raise his son, Peter, after the boy’s mother died. But the British government sends him back out on the seas—a five-month journey to the Andaman Islands to trade for goods. Bringing along 14-year-old Peter for the first time, Julius guides a crew to the main island of Andaman, where locals warmly welcome their arrival. An oracle there has already foretold that an arriving ship will have a “significant role in [the] people’s future.” This premonition may relate to the tattoo on each islanders’ forehead, which shows the date of their death; Drakor, a dragon, cursed them long ago when their reverence gradually turned into a lack of respect. Local leader Aarav designates Julius as the “official curse investigator.” As Julius learns, the islanders’ resigned view is unlike many other cultures’, and he understands it better after he falls for a local woman. Harju-Autti’s concise novel ably blends a tale of adapting to an unknown culture with introspection on death. For example, islanders dictate how others are treated based on their end dates; Peter may not even be able to attend the local school, simply because he doesn’t know when he’ll die. At the same time, islanders don’t fear their demises and undergo “special training” (essentially preparation) as their time draws near. The focus is solidly on Julius and Peter, with insights courtesy of the logbooks they each maintain, while islanders and barely named crewmembers make up the supporting cast. Despite this relatively narrow focus, the latter half delivers with an enthralling touch of romance and a closer look at Drakor. Crisp, detailed, and uncredited black-and-white illustrations, meant to be Julius’ signed-and-dated oil paintings, showcase such moments as the islanders’ ceremonies and Julius at the marketplace.
An often-engaging fictional exploration of the topic of mortality.Pub Date: March 19, 2025
ISBN: 9789528800248
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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