A few quibbles, but nonetheless an enjoyable read with the potential for an even better sequel.
Megalomaniac Ramius King is poised to conquer the world, with only a broken magician, a traumatized fortuneteller and two teenagers standing in his way.
Seventeen-year-old Kyle Adams doesn’t understand a lot of things: why he dreams of fighting legions of soldiers with magical weapons, why he never fits in, why he has been wrenched from his foster home in Chicago and sent to this backwoods burgh. But he’s happy to discover an affinity with classmate Lily Goodshepherd, who has her own secret—she can perform magic. Across town, Ramius King, the “Tall Man,” has turned an abandoned mill into a monster factory as part of his quest to implant magical skills in his minions, as opposed to relying on his previous tactic of finding humans with organic powers and turning them toward his nefarious ends. In Miami, Rosa Sanchez wakes from a premonitory dream of a mugging and embarks on a path that will lead her to Michael Galladin, a traumatized Guardian of Magic who may be the only obstacle to King’s goal of world domination, especially since King murdered every other Guardian in the world. Fortunately, the Guardians managed to find Kyle and begin his magical path. Andrews’ debut fantasy thriller gets off to a slow start, switching among three plot threads until gathering the protagonists in an obscure northern Michigan town for an explosive climax. The book has a few weaknesses—several characters, like the high school principal and the sinister assassin, are given too much back story for their ultimate importance, and there’s too much explanation of characters’ emotions and reactions instead of letting the actions speak for themselves. Furthermore, the nature of magic in this world is unsatisfyingly vague, as are King’s motives and plans in his unoriginal pursuit of world domination. In many ways, Mason Stone, King’s second-in-command, is the most compelling character in the novel, with his mixed loyalties in shades of gray.
A few quibbles, but nonetheless an enjoyable read with the potential for an even better sequel.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-0595473458
Page Count: 448
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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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