A fascinatingly detailed and murder-fueled adventure in a violent fantasy setting.
In Walker’s fantasy novel, the destinies of disparate characters converge in a spasm of violence.
Death haunts the land of Baelon: Years ago, young Princess Lewen died, followed by her mother, Queen Isadora, and the great architect Adrian Dunn. As the book opens, a man named Reynard Rascall, with the help of his eager principal henchman, Spiro, kills a terrified underling named Kasparr, who’s been underperforming recently as a member of the Guild of Takers. In the kingdoms of Baelon, the Guild is an all-pervasive crime syndicate, “an unpleasant fact of life” throughout the land. Its leaders plot the fates of entire nations in their secluded headquarters; overseers (such as Reynard) are capos controlling regions, and at the bottom of the ladder are the lowly street-level Takers. Reynard and Spiro travel to Kasparr’s district to examine his books, but, unbeknownst to them, the bookkeeper himself has been murdered by a group of Takers. Meanwhile, Mari Dunn, the architect’s widow, is plagued by visions predicting the assassination of King Axil of Aranox; the king’s marshal, Erik Carson, acts to save the king, and the king’s former guardsman, the grizzled warrior Rolft Aerns, returns to the capital city on a vengeance quest of his own—he’s eventually aided by Mari’s daughter, Sibil. Walker’s decision to alternate his narrative focus between all of these characters is smart and well done here, enabling him to largely avoid the stilted exposition that’s the bane of so many fantasy novels. The viewpoint-jumping keeps the reading experience fresh, though it sometimes slows momentum and gives rise to confusion. Some characters are unavoidably more compelling than others—it’s a safe bet that most readers will favor the hilarious duo of Reynard and Spiro (“Intuition, my friend,” Reynard taunts poor Spiro at one point. “A faithful companion of the thoughtful. Little wonder you’ve not met”).
A fascinatingly detailed and murder-fueled adventure in a violent fantasy setting.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798988923213
Page Count: 305
Publisher: Fairytale Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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