A fantasy offering that takes too long to raise its narrative stakes.
Two sisters caught up in their bargains with the Fae find themselves in over their heads in this tale of family tradition and upward mobility.
Lilabeth Canner taught her daughter and granddaughters to safely bargain with the Fae—for luck, good weather, and empty wombs. Years after her husband traded a handkerchief to a Fae girl for a plot of land on Prospect Hill, the Canners' oldest granddaughter, Alaine, presides over the family's failing farm. Alaine harbors a deep resentment of her younger sister, Delphine, whose impending marriage to Pierce Grafton will sweep her away to the big city and leave Alaine to worry about the farm alone. For her part, Del is jealous of her big sister; Alaine has a place in the world: at the farm, where Del has never felt as if she belongs. Her dreams of joining the socialite class flag as she struggles to adapt to the posh Grafton lifestyle, however. Both women soon find themselves making risky, untested bargains with the Fae to improve their circumstances—a decision that has dire, if predictable, consequences. Awkward dialogue plagues the opening chapters as Miller shoehorns information into casual conversations between family members. Poor pacing turns the novel's first half into a slog, and readers well versed in Fae literature may bristle at how long it takes the sisters' proverbial chickens to come home to roost. Del's society faux pas and Alaine's financial woes receive enough attention in the first half to almost completely drown out the early fairy bargains—the stakes of which are so low that it becomes easy to forget this is a fantasy novel. Yet when a bargain finally goes awry, the sisters' personal problems cease to matter at all. To its credit, the last third of this fairy story proves enjoyable. Although Miller nicely ties up the majority of loose ends in the denouement, many readers may not stick around to find out what happens on Prospect Hill.
A fantasy offering that takes too long to raise its narrative stakes.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780316378475
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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
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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