An expertly spun fantasy adventure featuring magic, combat, and art appreciation.
A band of rebels strikes a blow against the oppressive Empire in Hightower and Heim’s latest entry in the Spirit Song fantasy series.
Sixteen-year-old Alar thought being a rebel would be heroic. Unfortunately, he and the other members of the oss’stera resistance—dedicated to driving the hated Empire from their homeland of Argren, a magical fantasy realm —aren’t actually very good at killing imperial soldiers. Even when they manage to do so, more show up to take their places. As their seemingly futile rebellion wages on, Alar feels a strange power awakening inside of him—a cool, serene spot behind his eyes that seems to slow down time in moments of danger. Soon after, a witch appears in the rebels’ camp with an unusual offer: She will help Alar and his allies break into the Empire’s dreaded Inquisition prison to free several political prisoners, including a girl whom Alar feels responsible for. But why does this witch want to help them on this potentially suicidal mission? Meanwhile, novice inquisitor Harold Wolfe is sent to track down the rebel group only to get caught up in a scheme involving the corrupt imperial governor of Argren and a collection of stolen art. The authors’ prose is often painterly, appropriate given that Argren’s primary export to the rest of the Empire is its rare paint pigments: “It was the vibrant colors that attracted the artists to the valley. The surrounding hills were rich in the plants and minerals required to produce the vivid hues the Alle’oss loved. The inhabitants of the valley grew rich on pigments coveted throughout the Empire and beyond.” The world is vast and meticulously crafted, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously to have fun. The plot moves swiftly, and the characters, if familiar in type, play their roles well. Readers should find their appetites sufficiently whetted to seek out the other novels in the Spirit Song series.
An expertly spun fantasy adventure featuring magic, combat, and art appreciation.Pub Date: May 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781685131982
Page Count: 435
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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
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