A disturbing tale of love, ambition, despair, and redemption.
Rosenberg’s historical novel fictionalizes the struggles of the real-life Silver Dollar Tabor, the troubled daughter of Colorado “Silver King” Horace Tabor and his wife, Baby Doe.
The Tabor family, who once dominated the Colorado silver market while garnering riches, fame, and political power, has suffered drastic reversals of fortune. First, there was the scandal of United States senator Horace Tabor leaving his first wife to marry the controversial Baby Doe. Then came the silver crash, and Horace, who had all of his money invested in their Matchless Mine, lost everything. They moved from the splendor of Denver to the isolation of a shack next to the mine in Leadville. Horace died when his daughter Silver Dollar was still a child; a month later, her older sister Lily, whom she adored, left home. Silver was devasted—enter her imaginary playmate, Echo LaVode. When Silver finally leaves home, determined to become a movie star, Echo travels with her, packed comfortably in the further recesses of her mind. Silver, a talented singer and dancer, becomes a big player in movies. Down on her luck, she attempts the Slide for Life Challenge, a daring high-wire stunt spanning Denver’s Lake Rhoda. Attached to the wire only by a metal mouthpiece, she steps off the platform and begins sailing through the air…until she hits a snag in the wire. This darkly complex, twisty novel toggles between narratives occurring during two different time periods: Silver Dollar’s struggles from 1915 through 1925, and the ordeals of Baby Doe, still laboring at the Matchless Mine in 1932. Setting her tale against the evocative backdrop of Mob-controlled 1920s Chicago speakeasies, Rosenberg vividly brings to life the gradual, angry, and violent emergence of Echo as Silver’s increasingly dominant alter ego, a persona who exacts vengeance and precipitates mayhem while Silver “sleeps.” The author’s prose is riveting and meticulously detailed in scenes like Silver’s aerial stunt; she also composes lyrically magical passages, as when Silver becomes a tiger tamer (“The tigers emerged from the shadows, their massive forms filling the cage, magnificent stripes swirling like molten lava in the dappled sunlight”) and develops a mesmerizing relationship with the powerful wild cats.
A disturbing tale of love, ambition, despair, and redemption.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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