An entertaining sword-and-sorcery fable with intriguing characters and cosmic gravitas.
The brave Rommods help other legendary races battle the fierce hordes of an evil wizard in this debut fantasy.
DeRobertis’ rousing epic begins when Sh’vrilil, envoy of Elamendonath, king of the Elves of the Aldemy Forest, arrives at the court of the Rommod King Genonsendorus. The official bears tidings of huge armies of Goblins from the Deep East commanded by the 1,000-year-old sorcerer Eolgamar. The Rommods, who are divided between squat, short hill-Rommods and skinny, taller forest-Rommods, are known for their warlike valor and agree to send an army to help the Elves. The lanky Sharborough Morganforal, the Rommods’ greatest general and adventurer, sets off on a journey with Sh’vrilil, his buddy Blanchard Windswallow, and a few other disposable Rommods ostensibly to bring news of the alliance to Elamendonath but really to travel the Middle-Earth–ish land of Valadory and get into scrapes with its sundry denizens. These include gold-crazed Dwarves obsessed with mead-drinking contests; Gnomes; molelike Dugglards, ruled by the one-eyed King Tolgarrilium the Repellent; Trolls; fire-breathing Demons; faeries; ghouls; shadowy amoeboids; various unclassified monsters; and Dorian Pictarian, who, alas, is no Wilde-an dandy but a demonic Elf hunter. Sharborough and company fight, parley, and piece together Eolgamar’s plan to orchestrate the Goblin hosts and bring perpetual winter by summoning the Ice Giant Bergelmer. Complicating things is Blanchard’s discovery of the magic sword Nragnrath, meant to slay the gods during Ragnarok, which can defeat any foe but also brings ruin to all who unsheathe it. The heroes split up, with Blanchard and Sh’vrilil going south to fight Goblins and Sharborough to the northern wastes to confront Eolgamar.
DeRobertis’ yarn sounds many Tolkien-esque motifs—a heroic quest, an apocalyptic war, an all-powerful but all-corrupting talisman, evil as mindless essentialism (Eolgamar never explains why he hates Elves so much when they seem a fairly agreeable lot)—and adds explicit elements of Norse and Greek mythology to the mix. His writing one-ups Tolkien with polysyllabic titles, archaic usages (sometimes muffed: A vassal would never address his liege as “Your liege”), and curlicued trash talk. (“You have come a long way to die. Know your bane is Fandoril!”). The novel’s action is unstinting as the characters fend off hellhounds after Ogres after harpies in fight scenes that are well choreographed and suspenseful, including a confrontation between Sharborough and a giant spider that turns into a white-knuckle chess match played out with soft sounds and slight tremors. The author has a good sense of military strategy and battlefield tactics, which gives the lengthy, set-piece combat sequences an absorbing intellectual dimension to go with their buckets of gore. (“As the fifth turned to face him, hissing with hate, he cut its sword arm off above the elbow. Then, as it screamed, he turned full circle and severed its other arm.”) In quieter passages—“each year when the Ice Giants were beaten back by the end of winter, faeries would awaken with the melting of snow and help usher in spring”—DeRobertis turns his story’s mythic sensibility into beguiling poetry. Sharborough makes an appealing protagonist, brave yet calculating—“It was always important to recognize one’s own mistakes,” he muses, “and equally important to hide them from those who followed”—and resolved to control his own fate.
An entertaining sword-and-sorcery fable with intriguing characters and cosmic gravitas.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 602
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
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