Sheer joy, with quirky characters, spooky monsters, sprightly banter, and swashbuckling that puts Sindbad to shame.
A middle-aged mother in medieval Oman is convinced to return to her former career—piracy—in the first of an epic fantasy series.
A decade ago, nakhudha (shipmaster) Amina al-Sirafi abandoned the criminal seafaring life on the Indian Ocean after a terrible incident involving Raksh, the demonic husband she unwittingly married, and Asif, a member of her crew. But her quiet life with her half-human daughter, Marjana, in a remote, dilapidated mountain home is disrupted by a visit from Asif’s wealthy mother, who persuades, guilt-trips, and eventually threatens Amina into returning to her ship and reuniting her crew. She offers Amina an incredible sum to rescue Asif’s teenage daughter, Dunya, apparently kidnapped by Falco Palamenestra, a Frankish (i.e., Italian) ex-Crusader with an unhealthy interest in magical artifacts. Thus begins a wild adventure in pursuit of Dunya, Falco, and a mysterious and incredibly dangerous magical treasure known as the Moon of Saba. Fans of Chakraborty’s Daevabad books will appreciate an incident late in the novel that confirms that this series is set in the same universe, albeit several centuries earlier; however, that knowledge is not necessary to enjoy this story. Over the past few years, several social media threads have lamented the lack of middle-aged mothers as fantasy heroes, arguing that they would make for great protagonists: They're fierce and seasoned but forced to confront the conflicting needs of their familial, personal, professional, and social responsibilities, circumstances that many men—particularly not your young, inexperienced hero or your grizzled loner veteran—would not face. Chakraborty has clearly leaped to answer the call, and to very good effect. Amina exists in a society where women are expected to stay home and tend to family. She’s tried that life: She loves Marjana and would do anything to keep her safe. But once she goes forth again, Amina remembers how much she loves the sea and risking everything in search of adventure and profit. Balancing those two loves has the potential to tear her apart and will no doubt serve as a major point of tension in upcoming installments.
Sheer joy, with quirky characters, spooky monsters, sprightly banter, and swashbuckling that puts Sindbad to shame.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780062963505
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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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