A rousing adventure for alt-fantasy fans.
Sherlock Holmes meets Game of Thrones.
Call Bennett’s latest a drawing-room mystery, albeit the drawing room is the size of a small otherworldly kingdom. It begins, natch, with a corpse. “You were informed that the nature of his death was an alteration, yes, sir?” So asks a military officer of young Signum Dinios Kol, a.k.a. Din, who’s noted that a tree has torn the unfortunate victim apart. Din works for an oddball private detective, Immunis Anagosa Dolabra, a.k.a. Ana, who combines the wiles of Irene Adler with the eccentricities of Sherlock Holmes, including his penchant for narcotics. Din suspects that members of the Haza clan, corrupt 1 percenters, are mixed up in the nastiness, for they’re in the way of acquiring some real estate in the area, and the victim was an impediment. The whole business is complicated by the fact that someone has been undermining the walls of the empire so that leviathans can slither in from the ocean and add their mischief to the evil doings of errant titans abroad in the land. Ana has a fierce temper and is more loquacious than the subdued but sometimes lethal Din: “I do so admire,” she tells him, “how you can be a flippant shit with a mere handful of syllables. Quite a talent.” Bennett borrows from his own Foundryside series for a detail: Where those books involved a strange art called “scriving,” here Din is an Imperial engraver, “altered to remember everything I experienced, always and forever,” handy when it comes to memorizing safe combinations and the exact wording of past conversations. With plenty of red herrings—beg pardon, red leviathans—and neatly imagined plot twists to work through, the reader fond of faux medieval neologisms and occasional grownup moments (“a glimpse of her body, and a winking tuft of pubic thatch”) will enjoy solving the mystery with our heroes.
A rousing adventure for alt-fantasy fans.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781984820709
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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 delightful, genre-defying debut.
Historical horror? Dark fantasy? Queer romance? All of the above!
“I was hundreds of years old before I ever met him, but that day we were both young.” While visiting his Florence offices in 2013, attorney Sebastian Grave unearths a bloodstained lambskin glove that belonged to a past lover—a man he’d met in the 18th century. Nestled within this frame narrative is a tale of desire, werewolves, and the French Revolution. In telling his story, Sebastian introduces Sarmodel, the demon with whom he shares a body, and a succubus named Livia contributes chapters in which Joan of Arc, her notorious ally Gilles de Rais, and the archangel Michael all make appearances. First-time novelist Sullivan wields the tools of multiple genres deftly, but what really makes this book special is its central character. Sebastian has powerful magic at his disposal, but he’s also human enough to fall hard for a hot young nobleman. When Sebastian goes hunting for the Beast of Gévaudan, he’s not looking for adventure. The first time, it’s because he can’t resist Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne. The second time, it’s because he dreams of a reunion with his love—even though he knows this is a hopeless wish against the advice of Sarmodel. Using Sebastian as a narrator keeps things light, in part because he has a droll, contemporary voice and in part because it makes the worldbuilding feel natural. There are footnotes, but there are no infodumps. The fact that Sebastian doesn’t know exactly what he is sets the tone for storytelling that leaves a great deal unexplained while providing enough detail to keep the reader engaged. Deploying Sarmodel as a sort of alter ego and allowing Livia to offer her own perspective on Sebastian also adds both depth and charm.
A delightful, genre-defying debut.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250362766
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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