An absorbing introduction to an intricate cosmos with motley characters.
A teenager—surprised to learn she’s the spawn of God and Satan—finds herself immersed in a universe of Titans and otherworldly beings in this debut fantasy.
Near the beginning of time, God falls in love with her creation, Memnoth, God of Love. Together, they create the first Titan, Silver, who, after assuming the title of God of Death, murders God. A distraught Memnoth adopts the name Satan and hides his and God’s daughter, Aja Ashe Jensen, in New England in 1985. Silver eventually finds 17-year-old Aja in the 21st century and tries to kill her. But the girl survives, along with the now-awakened dragon apparently inside her; as it tells her, “I am you Aja. You are me.” Dragons’ eternal enemies are Bool, which are “joined species,” like a human who transforms into a tiger or a lion. As it turns out, not all Bool are bad. Aja even falls in love with one—John, who’s sometimes a woman, Yennifer, and other times Gia, a polar bear. Unfortunately, Silver remains a menace; if she can’t somehow coerce or trick the dragon-powered teen into destroying Earth, the God of Death may simply kill someone Aja loves. Scott stuffs this epic series opener with plenty of action and characters, with scenes set on Gella, the home planet of the Immortals, and players ranging from vampires to assorted gods. At the same time, prolonged, loosely connected subplots unfold prior to the book’s focus on Aja. For example, Cassy, who owns and runs a bar in hell, falls for new earthling hire Eva. The author’s unadorned, concise prose delivers just enough details, such as John’s brisk transformation into Yennifer: “A wind storm surrounded him and condensed into ice crystals.” While Scott keeps the extensive cast, changing time periods, and various locations in check, countless questions go unanswered. But surely the forthcoming installments will illuminate readers.
An absorbing introduction to an intricate cosmos with motley characters.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-551821-3
Page Count: 497
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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