An enveloping epic in a strikingly harsh world.
Balstrup’s moody fantasy novel explores religion and power.
Skalen Sybilla Ladain of Vaelnyr lives in an area of Velspar. The Seven Lands of Velspar place a lot of power in the hands of individuals known as Intercessors. These Intercessors make up a priest class that isn’t to be trifled with. For the average person, thinking “red thoughts,” which seem to be akin to “sinful” or violent thoughts, can result in execution. Sybilla hails from a ruling family, but when her father speaks against the Intercessors, retribution is swift. She wakes one day to find the family home aflame and says, “Because he had the courage to resist their advances, they silenced him with fire” (chapters are pegged to the incident; e.g., “Fifteen Years After the Fire”). The aggrieved daughter sets about her revenge in a merciless way, and she plans not only to kill the Intercessors, but to undo their past actions. Some wind up calling her the Red Skalen, and merely speaking her name causes one character to experience “an icy sensation.” But what does the future hold? Are the old ways of the Intercessors truly dead and gone? As the story progresses, it grows increasingly complex. There is much afoot in the lands of Velspar. Balstrup’s creatures are intriguingly unnerving; one looks like “a cloaked spirit falling from the sky” and another, a “mess of blood.” Not all surprises are physical either. One character manages to slip into a “gust of memory that was not her own.” Dialogue is often wooden, however (“You must be hungry after your journey, please sit and we can enjoy this meal while we talk”). Still, the murky atmosphere and the characters within it are full of surprises.
An enveloping epic in a strikingly harsh world.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780645474701
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Burning Mirror Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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