An imaginative but vulgar sendup of all that is holy.
A gorgeous sex vampire and a rabbi team up to settle the fate of the universe in this fantasia.
Danchik’s raucously off-color novel embeds bizarre characters in a satirical reimagining of Jewish religious traditions. Front and center is Viila, an irresistibly beautiful goddess who has slept with many of the men in the Bible as well as demons, giants, and historical figures. The most fatale of femmes, she tempts men into assaulting her and then slaughters them and drinks their blood after sprouting fangs and razor-tipped breasts. Just as unfortunate are the men she likes: After treating them to heavenly sex, she dumps them, whereupon they waste away pining for her. Viila feels so guilty about their plight that she wishes she could end her wearisome life. One night, she is gallantly defended by Rabbi Benjamin. The members of the rabbi’s sect fight by hopping about with their backs turned to opponents. Impressed by Benjamin’s pious resistance to her charms, she accompanies him on a quest to Mount Sinai to find the tablets given to Moses by God, which have the power to grant any wish. Rounding out their company are Benjamin’s horny teenage son, Milton, and a Teraphim, a disembodied head given to uttering prophecies and sleazy come-ons. Vying with them to get hold of the tablets are the Master of Death, an archvillain who wants to end all life in the universe, and the Sect of the Holy Nose Bashing, whose high priest wants to become God. Danchik sets his picaresque amid ribald spoofs of Torah stories—Adam appears as a narcissistic dolt who mates with every species in Eden—and Talmudic ruminations. (“By tradition and by ancient law, all Rabbis must master the 3,721 basic sexual positions approved by the Bible, and, most importantly, do nothing” that Amorites do “with Camels.”) The author’s fictive world is inventive and his prose is vigorous and colorful. Unfortunately, his shambolic humor is aggressively lewd and crude. (“Barnabus pushed forward three or four pairs of male genital organs in different sizes and colors. ‘You never know what a hot chick will like,’ he confided to the Rabbi. ‘I like to give them a choice.’ ”) The narrative sometimes feels like an overelaborate excuse for a series of gonzo japes.
An imaginative but vulgar sendup of all that is holy.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2022
ISBN: 9781639886203
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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