An absorbing novel with deftly drawn characters, heart-stopping action, and genuinely felt romance.
In McPherson’s fantasy sequel, a new king, his queen, and their guard confront the threat of mages who seek to make magic a “part of everyday life.”
This second book in the Heart-Mage Trilogy begins after King Beauregard’s elimination of the Watchers, an anti-magic organization of spies, fighters, and other operatives. Elias Batesian, the king’s guard and lover, survived the process of turning into a revenant to kill the group, but he lost part of his soul to a vicious god and his free will to Beauregard’s magical bonds. Beauregard is abducted by the Destiny Riders, who seek to return the Twelve gods to the world and make magic available to everyone. The narrative follows Queen Victoire and Elias’ search for the king, and King Beauregard’s unflagging attempts at escape. But Victoire is in danger, too; she’s pregnant with a mage-child who’s draining her lifeforce. Also, friends from Elias’ Watcher days destroy his enchantment, and his distinct personality, as a result; he reverts to his former identity as a spy named Aleixos Habiza and must forge a new life from the pieces of his old one. When the truth about the gods, the Watchers’ mission, and the Destiny Riders’ threat is uncovered, the king, queen, and guard must find a way to protect the kingdom—and come to terms with Elias’ erasure—before it’s too late. McPherson’s vivid and emotionally devastating tale addresses themes of self-sacrifice and true-believer righteousness. The well-developed characters, from the main trio to a minor page named Theo, provide the narrative with a strong backbone, and there’s engaging action throughout. What sets the novel apart from many of its contemporaries, though, is its representation of diverse sexualities and relationship types. The excellent pacing and delicious tension make the central polyamorous, LGBTQ+ relationship especially satisfying.
An absorbing novel with deftly drawn characters, heart-stopping action, and genuinely felt romance.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9798992254341
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Metaltail Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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