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
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
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
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