An ambitiously vast but tightly wound tale of destiny.
Wolf presents an SF/fantasy novel about four youngsters whose connection to a prophecy upends their later lives.
In 2177, Ariaas Haran Ebronds attends an auction with one goal: to get back his four grandchildren. Unfortunately, only three of them are up for sale, and Ariaas only succeeds in buying back one of them. That boy, Brenor, and his siblings aren’t like other children, as they are all tied to the widely known prophecy of the Canen Dera, which states that they will grow up and, as Ariaas puts it, “destroy us all” with “more power than anyone [has] ever seen, not in all our history.” He makes sure that Brenor is safe at a place called Aroun Vaer. Elsewhere, Brenor’s sister, Lenora, lives a simple but similarly secluded life in the northern forest. When, in the year 2200, the king suddenly summons her, it’s clear to her that she must flee for her own safety. She winds up connecting with Ariaas and Brenor, who dashed into action after they received word that she was on the run. That leaves two more siblings in potential danger, and plenty of trouble afoot. A young woman named Sissel Vakarra is taken away from her ailing grandmother by soldiers after apparently killing someone; her story initially seems disconnected from the story of the siblings, and the narrative transitions between the two plotlines are not always smooth. Just as momentum is building in the Lenora storyline, for instance, the focus changes to Sissel taking a quiet walk with her grandparent. There are occasionally verbose and awkward passages that slow the pace: “The younger brother of the king had taken him prisoner and locked him in the dungeon of the castle awaiting a public execution for a crime the younger brother himself committed.” The premise is well-crafted, however, and the action increases as the characters face and fight back against escalating dangers. Even with the story’s complexities and large cast, the suspense remains high, and the main players’ futures are uncertain.
An ambitiously vast but tightly wound tale of destiny.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781963029000
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Alex Parker Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2025
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
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
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