A simplistic adventure novel but one that’s never short on activity.
Debut author RLK offers a Western tale of a fearless man from the Midwest.
Joseph Reynolds grew up in the mid-1800s in western Ohio and learned to hunt at a young age to help his family survive their harsh environment. He proved to be a good shot, which was fortunate, as his father had a “weakness for the drink” and died after literally falling off a wagon. After Joseph’s sister and mother succumb to disease, he and his brother, Elijah, eventually head west. They both plan to join the U.S. Army in Texas, and in order to get there, they work as outriders on a wagon train headed to Oklahoma. It’s dicey work, but both manage to prove their worth. After the brothers enlist, they’re sent to Fort Defiant, where their orders are to fight local Apache raiding parties. As Joseph receives grueling training, Elijah, who’s “good with numbers,” manages a desk job as a paymaster. The brothers wind up in Washington, D.C., when the Civil War breaks out in 1861, and it’s just the beginning of their adventures. The narrative ultimately focuses on Joseph as he braves danger behind enemy lines during the conflict, works as a bounty hunter, and marries an Arapaho woman named White Dove. Events move very quickly throughout RLK’s novel. Joseph, as a character, is not one to mourn the many comrades he loses or fret over decisions he’s made; he’s a man of action, and, as such, the story showcases plenty of combat and death. However, although the momentum of the work is constant, portions can be dry at times, with morality presented in stark, straightforward terms with no shades of gray; men who die in battle are always characterized as good, and those who run from it are always seen as bad. Still, as Joseph shoots and rides his way across the novel, there’s always somewhere new for the story to go.
A simplistic adventure novel but one that’s never short on activity.Pub Date: April 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63937-365-9
Page Count: 622
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.
This engrossing historical novel focuses on the lives of three Black Americans in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1948, Ozzie Philips is a newly enlisted young soldier from Philadelphia who arrives at his station in occupied Germany just in time for the order by President Harry Truman desegregating the U.S. military. It’s inspiring news, but Ozzie will find it’s a rough transition. In 1950, Ethel Gathers is a journalist and the wife of a U.S. Army officer posted to Mannheim in occupied Germany. Unhappily childless, one day she sees a group of young biracial children tended by nuns and ends up volunteering at their orphanage. When Ethel discovers thousands of these children, born as the result of relationships between American soldiers and German women, she’s fired with purpose. In 1965 in Maryland, Sophia Clark is the ambitious teenage daughter of a hardworking farm family. When she’s unexpectedly selected for a scholarship to a fancy boarding school, she’s eager for the opportunity, if unprepared for what she’ll face as one of the first Black students to attend. The novel traces each character’s life in separate chapters, eventually revealing the connections among them. Their stories are firmly grounded in meticulous research, from the current events of each period down to details of clothing styles. Ozzie copes with the infuriating indignities imposed on “colored” soldiers despite their essential contributions, and Ethel and Sophia each learn to navigate arcane hierarchies—for Ethel, the scorekeeping of military wives and the barriers of bureaucracy, and for Sophia, the perils of boarding school. Their individual experiences are all part of the larger historical force of World War II and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. At some points the dialogue can be stilted in its efforts to convey history, but the characters and rich details are warmly engaging.
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781668069912
Page Count: 464
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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