Timely themes and a gripping narrative draw the reader in and keep them there.
In the first of a trilogy, three women disturb the social order of a rigidly caste-based society poised on the brink of disaster.
The red-blooded Embers command, the blue-blooded Dusters work, and the transparent-blooded, mutilated Ghostings serve. Sylah is a secret Ember, stolen as a toddler by the rebellious Duster sect known as the Sandstorm, who left a Duster in her place and raised her to revolution. Soldiers slaughtered the Sandstorm, and Sylah has spent the past several years as an aimless drug addict and fighter in an underground betting ring. A fellow Sandstorm survivor reenters her life and encourages her to enter the Aktibar, the fierce competition to become an heir to the empire’s ruling wardens. Due to some poor choices, Sylah ends up training another competitor instead: Anoor, a young woman everyone believes to be the Warden of Strength’s daughter when in fact she is one of the Duster children left by the Sandstorm. As Anoor advances in the Aktibar, Sylah must decide whether to rejoin the new Sandstorm or follow a different path to rebellion. Meanwhile, Hassa, a trans woman Ghosting who’s a friend of Sylah’s, seeks freedom for her people, all the while hiding secrets which strike at the Empire’s very foundations. The concept of people having different blood colors seems implausible and basing prejudice on it, ridiculous; but then, this is the same genre in which enormous dragons fly and breathe fire in sheer defiance of physics, appearing in stories written by authors from a world that foolishly constructs prejudice around skin color. Racism based on blood color also leads to some interesting possibilities for “passing,” which the author exploits to their fullest extent. The message is hardly subtle, but our current climate does not support much subtlety, and this blunt allegory—which also draws from Ghanaian and Arabian tales—is crafted into a compelling story with sympathetic characters. The depictions of Anoor, overcoming both the naïveté of a woman brought up in a pampered bubble and the bruised self-esteem of an abuse victim, and of Sylah, battling confused loyalties and a devastating addiction, are particularly well done.
Timely themes and a gripping narrative draw the reader in and keep them there.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-35694-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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