A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.
A human woman who feels like an outsider finds love with an exiled alien.
Maddie and her sister, Lila, were kidnapped from Earth and crash-landed on an ice planet. Lila is deaf, and Maddie has spent most of her life in the role of Lila’s protector. But now Lila is happily mated with a baby on the way, and Maddie is struggling to forge her own identity separate from her sister. Maddie is the last unmated human woman on the ice planet. She’s convinced it’s because she’s temperamental and difficult, and she feels a lot of self-loathing about her body, which she thinks is “fat” compared to the other women. Bored and lonely, Maddie decides to teach herself to hunt. Impressed by her strength and determination, Hassen, one of the clan’s hunters, offers to teach her hunting and trapping skills. She’s curious about Hassen, who is alone, having lost his entire family when a sickness swept through his clan. In Barbarian’s Touch (2024), the previous book in the series, Hassen kidnapped Lila, hoping to find a mate. As punishment, he has been outcast, but he continues to hunt on behalf of the clan, hoping to show that he’s worthy of being readmitted. He regrets that his loneliness and longing for a family prompted him to take such a rash action. Maddie is intrigued by Hassen, recognizing a fellow outcast when she sees one. She offers a friends-with-benefits arrangement, and the two enter into a passionate affair. Hassen hopes Maddie will eventually consider him as a permanent mate. Dixon shows how her characters’ arcs mirror each other, with both longing for acceptance and belonging. Maddie realizes her strengths add value to the tribe, while Hassen longs to be forgiven for his selfish kidnapping. There is very little conflict between the two, as the difficulties of actual survival on an ice planet trump minor emotional conflicts. When a huge earthquake throws the entire society into crisis, Maddie and Hassen prove their worth by going to extraordinary lengths to save the others.
A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780593639481
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Epic stakes, palace intrigue, and plenty of magic: Stark’s newest series is off to a solid start.
A romantasy mash-up of Crave (2020) and Fourth Wing (2023) from the bestselling author of A Court This Cruel and Lovely (2023).
When an undead stranger shows up on Arvelle’s doorstep, he offers her an impossible choice: Agree to kill the emperor, or watch her brother die. The bad news is that the emperor is an ancient and very powerful vampire protected by an elite company of soldiers. The good news is that Arvelle is a champion fighter herself—or at least she used to be. And, left with a choice that is no choice, she sets out for the capital to do the impossible. This is, on the whole, an engaging read. The Rome-inspired setting is interesting, its magic system is well-defined, and the politics of the emperor’s court is a nice complement to the action in the arena. Arvelle is a complex but sympathetic protagonist and Stark surrounds her with characters who also feel real—most importantly, the boy who broke her heart and the emperor’s sadistic son. The pacing is a bit slow at the beginning, but readers who get past the first third of the book will be amply rewarded. Fans who come to romantasy mainly for the love story may be slightly disappointed that the romance elements mostly stay in the background, while other readers may appreciate the emphasis on the action (and, of course, there are more installments to come). Stark has been building a dedicated following since she self-published Speak of the Demon in 2021, and her Kingdom of Lies series has been huge on TikTok. This author clearly understands the demands of her chosen genre: She knows how to hit the tropes while introducing intriguingly novel details and maintaining suspense.
Epic stakes, palace intrigue, and plenty of magic: Stark’s newest series is off to a solid start.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780063436718
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
