An immense yet immersive fantasy about succession and disorder after a monarch’s death.
An extensive fantasy focuses on a kingdom in turmoil.
When King Hexar returns to the city of Southpoint in the kingdom of Loran, conditions are not ideal. Hexar has been off fighting a profitless war that has accomplished little and amassed an enormous debt. Hexar’s daughter, Princess Lorana Eddenhold, was in charge while he was gone, and the domestic situation is no better. The peasants are overtaxed. If they cannot pay, the authorities will go so far as to take their children away. Those who cannot abide by the rules wind up executed. Or worse, they may be tortured in an ominous building known as the Red Tower. Another royal returning home is Hexar’s son, Jason Warchild. Jason has been at sea for two years fighting in the Holy Wars. Jason, Hexar, and Lorana are all attending what is known as Remembrance Day. It is a time of feasting and pageantry, though the excitement is cut short when Hexar is poisoned. Those behind Hexar’s murder hope the king’s exiled brother will now control the kingdom. But all is not so simple: A series of dangerous tests called the Kingstrials could install Jason as the rightful ruler. Yet the challenges of the Kingstrials are only the beginning. Schuette’s extensive world is an enticing one. Religion, class systems, and past events play large parts in the conflict. Consulting an informative history book, Lorana declares that the Kingstrials consist of “Sabotage. Savagery. Death.” While the sprawling novel is 902 pages, the story is eventful. Griffins fly; swords cleave; and the unsuspecting are sometimes slaughtered. Still, not every moment is vivid or exciting. For instance, individuals may make bland, action-hero pronouncements, such as “We’ve lingered in the open for too long. It’s dangerous.” Yet the fighting and feuding are matched in such a way to keep the intriguing plot moving swiftly. The competing interests make for a curious, highly detailed, engrossing fantasy.
An immense yet immersive fantasy about succession and disorder after a monarch’s death.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 902
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© 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.
