A riveting novel with indelible, sympathetic characters battling vicious bloodsuckers.
In Ross’ supernatural tale, a music-festival weekend turns into a fight for survival when vampires attack.
Alix Summerlin plans to spend three days partying at the Garlic Groove Music Festival in Oregon. She’s with a small group from Nevada State University including her best friend, Zoe Danvers, and her heartbroken ex, Logan Ward, whom Alix dumped just days prior when he brought up marriage. In the midst of loud music, beer, and a bong hit or two, a stranger wearing black catches Alix’s eye. He’s Kade, the “handsomest person” she’s ever seen, and an enigma; he seems indifferent to Alix, a beautiful young woman who’s grown accustomed to guys fawning over her. But the festival crowd suddenly erupts into panic, and people start disappearing. Vampires, Alix and friends quickly learn, have targeted the festival-goers, devouring some and capturing others. The NSU pals, along with Kade and a local named Ethan “Frog” Park (who knows quite a bit about vamps in the area), search for a refuge before they become someone’s next meal. Ross immediately sets the mood for this horror-themed outing as multiple characters ominously warn Alix to be careful. The vibrant cast demonstrates distinctive personalities: Alix is considered an “Ice Queen” for ruthlessly breaking off relationships, Zoe is the group’s much-needed peacekeeper, and Frog provides helpful vampiric intel (like the three “stages” of vampires’ formidability). Punctuated by bursts of action, much of the narrative unfolds like an apocalypse has already hit as the once-blaring festival grows “eerily silent” and Alix and others pass farms with no humans or animals in sight. This approach makes for a slow pace, leaving plenty of time for potential romance between Alix and Kade to develop. Things really pick up in the final act, courtesy of one person’s courage and several plot turns that, while exciting, are also predictable.
A riveting novel with indelible, sympathetic characters battling vicious bloodsuckers.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780988256866
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Ic13 Books
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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